The difficulty of choice: How prioritizing attributes and the desire to verify information affect decision-making

Abstract

Increasing digital presence results in more decisions taking place online where consumers are presented with an abundance and variety of alternatives combined with a constant flow of new information. This contributes to the choice-overload effect where alternatives initially seem enticing, but quickly become overwhelming, negatively impacting the decision-making process. The current study therefore aims to explore how the importance of attributes and likelihood of verifying information impact the degree of choice overload. Using a survey with a decision task participants (N = 134) were randomized into four groups based on the number of alternatives presented and number of attributes to consider. Importance of attributes, likelihood of verifying information and difficulty of the task were then measured. An ANOVA analysis showed a significant main effect for the number of alternatives but no main effect for the number of attributes or interaction effect. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that both importance of attributes and likelihood of verifying information were significant predictors of choice overload. Overall, in line with the hypothesis, the results indicated that increased importance of attributes reduced the difficulty of the task while increased likelihood of verifying information increased the difficulty.