Digital Sludging in the Privacy Context: Evidence of a Multigroup Analysis

Organizations apply aggressive tactics to harvest and exhaust data from individuals. These tactics exploit human psychology to manipulate individuals’ behavior through user interface design characteristics. Because governmental regulations for data collection were introduced recently, organizations make use of digital sludging to prevent individuals from refusing the consent for the data collection – most commonly within the cookie consent. Digital sludging is characterized as excessive and unjustified frictions that increase the effort and decrease the attention of a specific choice. Hence, we conducted a vignette study to investigate digital sludging in the privacy context further. Overall, we contribute to existing research by demonstrating how privacy concerns affect the perception and interaction with the cookie consent. In addition, we outline how manipulative practices such as digital sludging influence individuals’ decision-making

Examining the Use of Blockchain Technology in Virtual Worlds: A Socio-Technical Systems Perspective

Recent developments, including the rebranding of Facebook to Meta, have led to large-scale media attention on the phenomenon of the Metaverse. Although not being a new phenomenon in Information Systems (IS) research, many intricacies in virtual worlds remain unexplored. In particular , prior research has directed attention to users‘ lack of ownership rights, creating tension between the creator and user. To solve this tension, we argue that blockchain technology can potentially help to structure ownership rights. Therefore, our research explores a blockchain-based Metaverse through the socio-technical system lens. Our study highlights that, in the underlying case, the use of blockchain technology goes beyond the application of Non- Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and can also be found in the general organizational structure, blurring the boundaries of existing stakeholders. Our work contributes to research by providing a gaze into blockchain-based Metaverses and highlighting the potential application and benefit of the technology in virtual worlds

How the Perception of Agile Software Development Affects Beta Users’ Stress and Satisfaction

Agile software development has been shown to alleviate stress and improve satisfaction levels in development teams. Since this development approach relies on strong user involvement, these effects might carry over to the users themselves. If users have a positive perception of the agile approach, they might be more receptive to the produced software. However, users are rarely aware of the underlying development methodology and are, therefore, only partly affected by it. Hence, this study develops a new construct to measure users’ perception of the development methodology and to investigate the effects on technostress and user satisfaction. A survey with 117 beta users was conducted showing that perceiving a development process as agile lowers users’ technostress and elevates their satisfaction levels. Our Results highlight the essential role of user communication in the development phase. We discuss our implications for theory and practice, and conclude with promising future research avenues

Uncovering Drivers for the Integration of Dark Patterns in Conversational Agents

Today, organizations increasingly utilize conversational agents (CAs), which are smart technologies that converse in a human-to-human interaction style. CAs are very effective in guiding users through digital environments. However, this makes them natural targets for dark patterns, which are user interface design elements that infringe on user autonomy by fostering uninformed decisions. Integrating dark patterns in CAs has tremendous impacts on supposedly free user choices in the digital space. Thus, we conducted a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews with developers to investigate drivers of dark patterns in CAs. Our findings reveal that six drivers for the implementation of dark patterns exist. The technical drivers include heavy guidance of CAs during the conversation and the CAs\u27 data collection potential. Additionally, organizational drivers are assertive stakeholder dominance and time pressure during the development process. Team drivers incorporate a deficient user understanding and an inexperienced team

Exploring Consumers Risk Mitigation Strategies in E-Commerce: A Qualitative Study of High-Risk Transactions

The recent Covid-19 pandemic has led to a sharp increase in online shopping. While the promises of shopping on e-commerce platforms are vast, there are simultaneously novel and exacerbated risks compared to traditional brick-and-mortar retail purchases. Existing research outlines numerous risk dimensions associated with online shopping. In addition, scholars examine the underlying reasons for consumers' risk perceptions, such as the inability of physical quality checks. However, there is a lack of research investigating how consumers attempt to navigate and mitigate risk perceptions when confronted with a high-risk online transaction. To address this research gap, we conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with consumers who had recently performed an online transaction associated with high-risk perceptions. Our study contributes to the existing literature by identifying an affective and cognitive risk mitigation strategy and respective underlying mechanisms. Notably, we find that online social networks play a central role in shaping consumers' risk perceptions

Exploring the Impact of Digital Sludging

Digital sludges discourage individuals\u27 decision-making by implementing excessive or unjustified frictions for certain choices. This restricts individuals\u27 freedom of choice and leads to an unbeneficial manipulation of choice. Based on the theoretical foundation of sludging in the offline context and human psychology, we developed a categorization of digital sludges to uncover different manifestations. Thus, digital sludging primarily affects the effort and attention of a choice and results in multiple adverse effects on individuals. Consequently, we propose a vignette study to examine digital sludges further. We expect our final research to generate an understanding of consequences and the perception of digital sludges in the privacy context. As a result, our study allows us to derive practical recommendations for organizations concerning information architecture and interface design of their socio-technical systems

Insights on Attention Capture Dark Patterns in Social Networking Sites

Over the last decade, organizations have almost doubled the users\u27 average daily time spent on social networking sites. A potential driver is the incorporation of attention capture dark patterns in social networking sites, which are designed to maximize users\u27 time spent, daily visits, and interactions with social networking sites. However, up to this date, the actual impact of attention capture dark patterns on users is largely unexplored. Our research aims to bridge this gap by examining the impact of attention capture dark patterns on users through a full factorial between-subjects vignette study. We expect our final research to contribute to dark patterns research by generating insights into how users respond to attention capture dark patterns. This enables us to derive practical implications for social networking sites\u27 interface and interaction design

Towards Ethical Design Science Research

With the incredible advancements in technology, there is a high chance that design science research (DSR) will gain momentum in the realm of IS research. However, since these technologies have become also increasingly more disruptive, there is a need to mitigate and prevent some of the adverse effects in DSR. Here, ethical discourses, as well as ethical design principles, could be beneficial. Unfortunately, IS research and especially DSR have hitherto taken a superficial perspective on ethics and there exists no schema nor framework that explains how academics can address ethical issues. It is against this backdrop that we develop a conceptual map and framework on how to engage systematically and coherently in ethical discourses and derive ethical design principles. Furthermore, we propose a novel type of design principles: negative design principles. These principles encapsulate additional ways to express normative, e.g., ethical statements and additional means towards responsible and accountable DSR

Instances of Digital Dark Nudging: Findings of a Systematic Literature Analysis

This paper provides a literature analysis of digital dark nudging instances. Specifically, the literature analysis identified 14 relevant publications from various research disciplines. As a result, we systematically categorized the publications into seven instances of digital dark nudging (e.g., false expectations) within five application domains (e.g., e-commerce). Moreover, our results suggest that digital dark nudging leads the various adverse effects for individuals, such as monetary losses. We contribute to existing research by providing an overview of digital dark nudging research. Our findings indicate the need to investigate the long-term consequences of digital dark nudging. Furthermore, we pinpoint the need for clear differentiators between regular digital nudging and digital dark nudging, which is desperately needed to ensure to positive nature of digital nudging