English

Concentrating on the Impact: Consequence-based Explanations in Recommender Systems

Information Retrieval 2023-11-06 v3 Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

Recommender systems assist users in decision-making, where the presentation of recommended items and their explanations are critical factors for enhancing the overall user experience. Although various methods for generating explanations have been proposed, there is still room for improvement, particularly for users who lack expertise in a specific item domain. In this study, we introduce the novel concept of \textit{consequence-based explanations}, a type of explanation that emphasizes the individual impact of consuming a recommended item on the user, which makes the effect of following recommendations clearer. We conducted an online user study to examine our assumption about the appreciation of consequence-based explanations and their impacts on different explanation aims in recommender systems. Our findings highlight the importance of consequence-based explanations, which were well-received by users and effectively improved user satisfaction in recommender systems. These results provide valuable insights for designing engaging explanations that can enhance the overall user experience in decision-making.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.16708,
  title  = {Concentrating on the Impact: Consequence-based Explanations in Recommender Systems},
  author = {Sebastian Lubos and Thi Ngoc Trang Tran and Seda Polat Erdeniz and Merfat El Mansi and Alexander Felfernig and Manfred Wundara and Gerhard Leitner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.16708},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

The paper was presented at IntRS'23: Joint Workshop on Interfaces and Human Decision Making for Recommender Systems, September 18, 2023, Singapore. and is published in the workshop proceedings: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3534/

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:09:20.859Z