TY - JOUR
AU1 - Oh,, Jeeyun
AU2 - Sundar, S., Shyam
AB - Abstract We explore theoretical mechanisms by which the interactivity of a medium enhances the persuasive potential of messages, by investigating the effects of 2 different types of website interactivity—modality interactivity and message interactivity—on the nature of user engagement with messages. In a 3 (Message Interactivity: High/Medium/Low) × 2 (Modality Interactivity: Slider/Control) factorial experiment (N = 167), we discovered that modality interactivity led to more positive assessment of the interface and greater cognitive absorption, contributing to more favorable attitudes toward the website and even toward the antismoking messages. However, it reduced the amount of message-related thoughts. In contrast, message interactivity enhanced message elaboration, leading to more positive attitudes among those with low involvement in the message topic. The literature on persuasive communications has long focused on message features, such as argument quality (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), that can change users' attitudes and behaviors. Lately, scholars have suggested that structural features such as scene changes on TV (Lang, 2000) and aesthetics and usability of webpages (Sutcliffe, 2002) can shape media users' attitudes toward persuasive messages. Interactive media have introduced yet another factor: interactivity. There is a growing realization that the persuasive effects of messages may be conditioned by how users interact with media (Sundar, Oh, Kang, & Sreenivasan, 2013), but the literature does not provide a coherent understanding of the role played by interactivity in the persuasion process. Interactivity has been defined as a construct involving several different aspects—two-way, reciprocal communication or synchronicity (Liu & Shrum, 2009; Rafaeli, 1988), personalization of content (Kalyanaraman & Sundar, 2006; Wu, 2006), user control (Steuer, 1992), and technological affordances that alter the medium, source, and message of communication (Sundar, 2007). Although the most desirable outcome of interactivity is greater user engagement with persuasive content, the theoretical connection between interactivity and user engagement is still unanswered. While some argue that interactivity leads to shallow processing and superficial interactions with media content (e.g., Carr, 2010), others claim that interactivity richly operationalizes the ideal of “active audience” that was not realized with traditional mass media (e.g., Sundar, 2007). Such contradictory notions of the role played by interactivity can be attributed to two major limitations in previous research, one pertaining to how interactivity is conceptualized and the second pertaining to how engagement is conceptualized. First, interactive features have been operationalized as peripheral cues, often limited to communication or navigational tools, such as online-contact form, site search tool, online bulletin board, or an interface feature for adjusting information flow (e.g., Liu & Shrum, 2009; Lynch & Ariely, 2000). In order to be considered more integral to the processing of persuasive messages, interactive features should significantly change the way users access the core message that the medium aims to deliver, rather than merely increase navigational activity. Second, the concept of user engagement has been defined too narrowly, which inhibits scholars from constructing a more comprehensive model of interactivity effects. Whereas most studies have focused on elaboration—the degree to which interactivity enables users to systematically process the message (e.g., Liu & Shrum, 2009; Sicilia, Ruiz, & Munuera, 2005)—cognitive absorption in the browsing task (Webster & Ho, 1997) could be equally important in assessing the influence of interactivity. This type of engagement is conceptually different from message elaboration, and is often used by the advertising industry, for example, “Google Engagement Ads” (Cohen, 2014). Therefore, in order to fully understand the persuasive potential of interactivity, we have to consider both the absorption and elaboration aspects of user engagement. In the study reported here, we address these two limitations as we investigate a core question about the effects of interactive media: Does interactivity help or hinder persuasion? We examine the theoretical mechanisms underlying the persuasive effects of interactivity, based on a meaningful operationalization of interactivity and a rigorous definition of the key mediator of its persuasive effect—user engagement. Operationalizing interactivity as a central feature of delivering persuasion messages, rather than as a peripheral feature on the interface, would allow us to transcend the previous notion of interactivity as a secondary player in the persuasion process. We will examine whether integrating interactivity into the main persuasive content is key to successful persuasion. In addition, we will define user engagement in two different ways and assess whether they differentially mediate the effects of different types of interactivity on persuasion. In so doing, we will empirically construct a new theoretical model of interactivity effects on persuasion. Two aspects of user engagement: absorption and message elaboration User engagement refers to a psychological state where users are either cognitively or emotionally involved in a task at hand (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008; Chapman, Selvarajah, & Webster, 1999; Strange & Leung, 1999). However, as Green and Brock (2000) point out, user feelings of being engaged with media content do not necessarily mean that they take the central route to processing the content. Literature in information systems and human–computer interaction proposes another way to conceptualize user engagement, in terms of “cognitive absorption.” Cognitive absorption has been defined as temporal dissociation and focused immersion in the interaction (Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000), or the state where an individual is consciously involved in an interaction with almost complete attentional focus in the activity (Oh, Bellur, & Sundar, 2010). Whereas user engagement has mainly referred to cognitive absorption in the human–computer interaction field, the same term has been used to refer to elaboration (or cognitive involvement) in persuasion studies. Elaboration is a divergent process in which individuals bring diverse issue-related thoughts and previous experience to evaluate an argument, while absorption is said to be more convergent in that individuals would have a single, strong focus on the narrative (more generally, the content) itself (Green & Brock, 2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002). Nevertheless, both phenomena commonly refer to the state where users fully invest their cognitive ability and resources to process incoming information from media. Both cognitive absorption and elaboration have been used as indicators of user engagement. Users are said to be “engaged” when they are completely absorbed in operating a new media technology (e.g., Agarwal & Karahanna, 2000; Chapman et al., 1999), or engrossed in media content or browsing task (e.g., Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; O' Brien & Toms, 2010). Users are also said to be “engaged” when they invest their cognitive resources using their previous experience and knowledge to process media messages and make judgments (e.g., Ravindran, Greene, & Debacker, 2005; Sicilia et al., 2005). Given this, a comprehensive measurement strategy for user engagement would be to incorporate both absorption and elaboration, so that we can fully examine the effects of interactivity on user engagement. Modality interactivity and user engagement The concept of interactivity explicated by Sundar (2007) suggests three forms of interactivity that can be central to delivering persuasion messages. Based on three key elements of communication, interactivity can exist as a medium feature, source feature, and message feature. Medium-based interactivity (also known as modality interactivity) refers to the variety of tools or modalities available on the interface for accessing and interacting with information. For instance, with more developed interfaces, modality interactivity includes examples such as sliders, drags, mouse-overs, and zoom features available on websites. Using the mouse to spin a virtual camera and to zoom in the details of it would be considered as having more capacity for controlling the medium or the interface, thus as being higher in interactivity, compared with merely scrolling a webpage with corresponding static pictures, as if in a magazine (Xu & Sundar, 2014). Literature suggests that this type of interactivity can positively influence user attitudes toward content and their behavioral intentions. Daugherty, Li, and Biocca (2008) found that a website employing modality interactivity, such as zooming in on an image or animation (to simulate movement of an object), yielded positive brand attitudes and greater purchase intention. Schlosser (2003) also found that modality interactivity, such as clicking on or rolling the mouse over a camera image, created greater purchase intention than the control condition with static pictures of each corresponding step. However, these studies do not specify a theoretical mechanism for such effects. As a starting point, we could surmise that greater cognitive absorption in the mediated content can be an outcome of modality interactivity. When the site enables users to interact with the content, one consequence of the interaction might be that they can be led to pay more attention to the website browsing task and have more fun while exploring various aspects of the website (Sundar et al., 2010). However, the theoretical mechanism by which modality interactivity enhances cognitive absorption is unclear. In other words, what is it about modality interactivity that makes individuals feel more immersed while browsing? One possibility is based on the notion of “perceptual bandwidth” (Reeves & Nass, 2000). For instance, when individuals operate a slider feature on an antismoking website that shows the changes in brain activities, the process requires users to adjust their motor response to drag their mouse from left to right, perceptually code the visual changes according to their mouse movement, and, finally, cognitively process the graphical information that shows more inactive areas in the heavy smokers' brain. During this process, their bandwidth for information uptake is expanded compared with the situation where they passively receive stimuli from media, because they can experience the dynamism of content by directly interacting with it. This means modality interactivity contributes to a more visceral user experience, reducing the chasm between the real and the mediated environment. The operation of the media interface is so natural and intuitive (Norman, 2002; Steuer, 1992) that users hardly notice the interface when they are manipulating the content. Good modality interactivity is therefore synonymous with a natural, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface, leading to enhanced perceptual bandwidth for users to mobilize their perceptual, motor, and cognitive abilities toward interacting with the content delivered by the interface. In support of this proposition, Sundar, Bellur, Oh, Xu, and Jia (2014) found that individuals' interface assessment of its naturalness, intuitiveness, and ease of use led to greater feelings of being absorbed while browsing, which in turn led to more favorable attitudes toward the website and the content. However, their study did not focus on persuasive effects of interactivity, because they tested users' attitudes toward informational content rather than persuasive messages. In this study, we propose that even the evaluation of persuasive messages on an antismoking website will be influenced by the website's naturalness, intuitiveness, and ease of use. If expansion of perceptual bandwidth is the principal theoretical mechanism, then users' assessment of interface is indeed key to persuading users, with this evaluation of the website mediating the effect of modality interactivity upon users' feelings of absorption while browsing, which, in turn, is expected to enhance their attitudes toward the antismoking website and its persuasive messages. H1: Modality interactivity will lead to more positive interface assessment compared with the control condition. H2: Modality interactivity will lead to greater cognitive absorption compared with the control condition. H3: More positive interface assessment and higher cognitive absorption created by modality interactivity will, in turn, lead to more positive attitudes toward website (H3a), more positive attitudes toward the antismoking messages (H3b), and more negative attitudes toward smoking, after controlling for pre-existing attitudes toward smoking (H3c). While modality interactivity would be expected to have a generally positive effect on cognitive absorption, its effect on the elaboration aspect of user engagement may go in the opposite direction because of its tendency to preoccupy the user in experiencing the site, at the cost of storing and reflecting upon the content delivered by the site. The limited capacity model of mediated message processing (Lang, 2000) would claim that adding more bells and whistles to the interface would deplete the pool of available cognitive resources, thereby negatively affecting users' information processing of the message. However, this claim has not been rigorously tested with interactive media. Sundar et al. (2010) provided empirical evidence suggesting that a highly interactive website (with the 3D carousel—a modality interactivity feature) inhibited participants' recall memory for the content compared with the same site with only simple clicking. Although recall memory is an indicator of systematic processing (e.g., Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994), we do not know whether interactive features indeed blocked participants from elaborating on persuasive messages even when it is employed as a central feature to deliver persuasive messages. Therefore, it is important to formally test the following hypothesis: H4: Modality interactivity will lead to lesser message elaboration compared with the control condition. Message interactivity and user engagement Different from modality interactivity, some forms of interactivity can go beyond being bells and whistles on the interface and are explicitly designed to increase systematic processing. Message interactivity refers to the degree to which the system affords users the ability to reciprocally communicate with the system. In order to do this, the system has to be capable of accounting for previous messages from the user as well as those preceding them so that it can contingently respond to user's input. Theoretical mechanisms underlying the effect of message interactivity rest on the contingency involved in message exchange (Rafaeli, 1988). Hyperlinks and buttons embedded in websites show the communication possibilities to users, where they can click to see another layer of content. As opposed to reading the whole content by just scrolling down noninteractively, these interactive features account for users' previous input. This conceptualization follows the “conversational ideal” (Rafaeli, 1988, p. 117), in that a successful form of message interactivity in human–website interaction mimics the way in which humans conduct face-to-face conversations (Sundar, Bellur, Oh, Jia, & Kim, in press). The back-and-forth interaction between the user and the system can elicit a higher degree of systematic processing of messages that are delivered by the system. Sicilia et al. (2005) showed that embedded hyperlinks in a product website induced a greater number of website-related thoughts. By using think-aloud protocol, Tremayne and Dunwoody (2001) measured cognitive elaboration as the number of comments increased, demonstrating a connection between currently encountered information and prior knowledge. An interactive version of a website with hyperlinks was found to increase both participants' elaboration and the amount of content-specific recall. Eveland and Cortese (2004) also found that a hyperlink-based nonlinear design can increase knowledge structure density, that is, a better understanding of how the facts they learned are interconnected, compared with a linear version of the same health website. However, none of these studies operationalized interactivity as a message feature that highlights the main persuasive argument. Nor did they test the persuasive outcome of the message elaboration induced by message interactivity. In this study, message interactivity is operationalized as the number of layers of hyperlinks: low (only one layer, i.e., scrolling only) versus medium (two layers of hyperlinks) versus high (three layers of hyperlinks plus breadcrumbs). The high message interactivity condition would enable users to be involved in active message exchanges with the system, allowing them to further click and open the content they want to read and visualize the navigation path they went through. Medium and low conditions would allow lesser chances for users to construct their own structure of reading the content compared with the high condition. Given this operationalization, we propose the following hypothesis: H5: Higher message interactivity will result in greater elaboration of antismoking messages. The role of cognitive engagement in the persuasion process relies on the degree of involvement in the topic of persuasion. Dual-process models (Chaiken, 1987; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) suggest that highly involved participants will cognitively engage with the content by systematically processing the messages. In contrast, for participants who have low involvement with the topic, heuristic processing is said to predominate—their attitudes toward the message are simply determined by the presence or absence of relevant heuristic cues. In this study, those who are highly involved in the issue of smoking would systematically process the antismoking messages, even when it is offered in a relatively noninteractive form, for example, simply scrolling down a text-heavy site. Therefore, message interactivity is more likely to affect the cognitive processing of those who are not highly involved in the issue of smoking. Given that message interactivity operationalized in this study functions as a tool for involving participants rather than simply serving as cosmetic cues, it is likely that message interactivity further engages low-involvement participants in systematic processing as they open the multiple layers of hyperlinks in stages. This systematic processing is likely to mediate the effect of message interactivity upon attitudes toward the persuasive messages. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis: H6: Message elaboration will mediate the relationship between message interactivity and attitudes toward messages for low-involvement participants. Combinatory effects of two types of interactivity Whereas previous studies focus on the amount of interactivity and its effects, this study operationalizes interactivity in two different ways—modality interactivity and message interactivity—and investigates how these different types of interactivity function together on the same interface. Given its role in facilitating a variety of ways for users to manipulate the interface, modality interactivity may be seen as bells and whistles. It often contains visual and playful features, allowing users to make cosmetic adjustments to their experience. Therefore, the presence of modality interactivity on an interface is likely to serve as a peripheral cue. In contrast, message interactivity is more likely to enhance individuals' attention to the message delivered by the website, rather than simply focus on interface features. Thus, when modality interactivity is deployed on the same interface as message interactivity, it can moderate the effect of message interactivity on message elaboration by triggering heuristics (or mental shortcuts) about the nature of the message. According to the additivity hypothesis (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994), when heuristic cues provide information that is compatible with persuasive messages, the presence of heuristic cues can bolster the persuasive outcome. However, when the heuristic cue provides information that contradicts the judgment made by systematic processing, the effect of the heuristic cue can be negligible (attenuation hypothesis). Given that there is little empirical evidence of whether the information provided by modality interactivity (operationalized here in the form of a slider tool, to be described later) would be perceived as compatible with antismoking messages by users, we propose the following research question: RQ: How does the interaction between modality interactivity and message interactivity influence user engagement, attitudes, and beliefs toward antismoking messages? Method A 2 (Modality interactivity: Control vs. Slider) × 3 (Message interactivity: Low vs. Medium vs. High) fully factorial, between-subjects lab experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses and answer the research question. Pre and posttests design was employed to account for pre-existing attitudes toward smoking. Participants Participants were recruited from undergraduate classes at a large public university in the United States, in exchange for extra credit (N = 167). The final sample included 97 females (58.1%) and 70 males (41.9%), with the average age of 19.6. Procedure First, a 5 minute, self-administered online questionnaire along with an informed consent form was sent to recruited participants. The online questionnaire measured their smoking status and preexisting attitudes toward smoking. The second part of the study was administered in a media laboratory. Participants were given a browsing task on an antismoking website. The questionnaire software randomly assigned each participant to one of the six conditions. The instruction asked participants to fully browse the website and spend as much time as they needed. They were specifically told that the site contained three different topics and asked to explore all three topics and learn as much as they could. On average, participants spent 317.08 seconds browsing the entire website (Min = 30.37 seconds, Max = 682.98 seconds). After they finished browsing the site, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The entire study session lasted approximately 40 minutes. Stimulus Six prototype websites [2 (Modality Interactivity: Control vs. Slider) × 3 (Message Interactivity: Low vs. Medium vs. High)] were constructed for this study. Except for the interactivity features, all six versions of the prototype shared the same content, and the same page layout. The entire prototype websites had three topics describing the negative health outcomes induced by smoking: “How smoking affects your looks,” “How smoking affects your brain,” and “How smoking affects your respiratory system.” Each of the three issues was further categorized into three sections: “How smoking affects your looks” was divided into “Premature aging and wrinkles,” “Icky teeth,” and “Thinner hair”; “How smoking affects your brain” was divided into “Smoking reduces your IQ,” “Smoking induces lack of concentration,” and “Smoking is linked to brain shrinkage”; and “How smoking affects your respiratory system” was divided into “Oxygen intake,” “Mucus congestion,” and “Emphysema.” Manipulation of modality interactivity Modality interactivity was operationalized as presence (Slider condition) or absence (Control condition) of sliders. In the Control condition, each of the three topics contained two to three static images related to the topic (i.e., looks, brain, and respiratory system). The images were designed to show three different health outcomes regarding each topic area. In the Slider condition, a drag-and-slide bar was located under the same-sized images. The images of a female's look, brain activity, and lungs changed as participants moved the slider horizontally across the image. Instead of showing images discretely like those in the Control condition, the images were morphed into one so that the same image appeared to show gradual changes over time upon slider movement across the horizontal axis. Figure 1 shows the control and the slider condition for the images related to the effects of smoking on looks. Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide The control condition (left) and the slider condition (right). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide The control condition (left) and the slider condition (right). Manipulation of message interactivity Message interactivity was operationalized as the number of layers of hierarchical hyperlinks and the presence/absence of breadcrumbs. The low condition did not have any hyperlinks. Participants were able to read the three topics by simply scrolling down the screen. The medium condition had two layers of hyperlinks. On the homepage, participants were able to click one of the three boxes under the main frame (e.g., “how smoking affects your looks”). This click would direct the participant to the next page with all of the three subtopics (e.g., in this case, “premature aging and wrinkles,” “icky teeth,” and “thinner hair”) and related textual descriptions. At the bottom of the page, “back” and “next” buttons were provided to take users either back to the homepage where they can click the other two topics, or to proceed to the final layer. The high condition had three layers of hyperlinks and breadcrumbs. The high condition shared the same first page with the medium condition. On the next page, there were three hyperlinks listing the three subissues of the selected topic, allowing them to click them one by one. Upon selection of each hyperlink, the site showed a paragraph of textual information about each subtopic, while automatically closing the other subtopic if it had been opened. They could proceed to the final layer that was exactly the same as in the medium condition. In addition, participants could see yellow-colored breadcrumbs that kept track of their locations on the website right above the main frame (Figure 2). Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Low message interactivity condition (left), medium message interactivity condition (middle), and high message interactivity condition (high). Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Low message interactivity condition (left), medium message interactivity condition (middle), and high message interactivity condition (high). Moderating and control variables All measures are on a 9-point scale unless otherwise indicated. Issue involvement was measured with 10 items from Zaichkowsky (1985). Participants indicated if information about smoking is “unimportant-important,” “irrelevant-relevant,” “means nothing to me-means a lot to me,” “worthless-valuable,” “not needed-needed,” “uninvolving-involving,” and so on. (M = 4.92, SD = 1.88, Cronbach's α = .93). Smoking status was classified into three categories, based on Siegel and Biener (2000): nonsmokers who never tried smoking (N = 84), experimenters who tried smoking at least once but smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes (N = 63), established smokers who smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime (N = 20). Pre-existing attitudes toward smoking were measured by seven items from Swanson, Rudman, and Greenwald (2001), including “unsexy-sexy,” “unpleasant-pleasant,” “unsociable-sociable,” “ugly-glamorous,” “stressful-calming,” “negative–positive,” and “unfavorable-favorable” (M = 2.58, SD = 1.69, α = .92). Persuasion literature points out that when the persuasive message is threatening, or personally relevant, individuals tend to put more effort into processing the message, but in a defensive and critical way (Block & Williams, 2002). Thus, this study measured biased message processing by using six semantic differential items (Shen, Monahan, Rhodes, & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2009), including “not distorted-distorted,” “not overblown-overblown,” “not exaggerated-exaggerated,” and so on. (M = 3.04, SD = 1.69, α = .90). Manipulation check Perceived interactivity was measured by three items adapted from Kalyanaraman and Sundar (2006) asking participants to indicate how interactive the website is, if the website allows them to perform a lot of actions, and if the website allows them to access information in a variety of ways (M = 5.21, SD = 2.16, α = .91). Mediating variables The interface assessment measure was obtained from Sundar et al. (2014) and consisted of three items on a 9-point Likert scale: “My interaction with the website was intuitive,” “The ways that I used to control the changes on the website seemed natural,” and “The website was easy to use” (M = 7.06, SD = 1.30, α = .63). User engagement was measured by (a) self-reported cognitive absorption, (b) self-reported elaboration, and (c) message elaboration reflected in a thought-listing measure: First, absorption was measured by six items obtained from Agarwal and Karahanna (2000): “I had fun interacting with the site,” “The site's features provided me a lot of enjoyment,” “I was bored (reverse-coded),” “I felt as if my curiosity was aroused,” and so on (M = 5.43, SD = 1.53, α = .88). Self-reported elaboration was measured based on Kahlor, Dunwoody, Griffin, Neuwirth, and Giese (2003): “I thought about what actions I myself might take based on what I browsed,” “I found myself making connections between the website content and what I've read or heard about elsewhere,” “I thought about how and what I had browsed related to other things I know,” and so on (M = 7.52, SD = 1.19, α = .79). In addition, a thought-listing measure was also employed to measure message elaboration. Right after participants finished browsing, they were asked to list all the thoughts they had while browsing the website within 2 minutes. Three coders coded the open-ended responses following the steps described in Shen and Dillard (2009). The coders fragmented the data into thought units. 10% of the data was checked if they agree on the thought units. Guetzkow's U (Guetzkow, 1950) averaged .015 for all pairs of coders. In other words, there was only 1.5% of disagreement in coders' unitization of thought. Total amount of thoughts generated by an individual was calculated by the number of thought units relevant to the stimulus website, including favorable, neutral, and unfavorable thoughts about the message (M = 4.81, SD = 2.07, Min = 0, Max = 15). For each category, the Cohen's kappa for three pairs of coders was .50, .56, and .73, respectively. Dependent variables Attitudes toward smoking were measured by the same seven items used for the pre-existing attitudes measure, M = 2.29, SD = 1.52, α = .92. For attitudes toward antismoking messages, participants indicated how well six adjectives from Sundar (2000) (believable, informative, insightful, objective, interesting, and clear) describe the messages that were delivered by the website (M = 7.22, SD = 1.22, α = .82). Attitudes toward the website consisted of six items selected from Sundar (2000) and Sundar et al. (2014). Participants were asked to indicate how well the adjectives (exciting, high quality, fun, cool, imaginative, and entertaining) describe the website that they interacted with (M = 5.27, SD = 2.01, α = .95). Results General linear model (GLM) analyses were used to test the effects of the two independent variables (modality interactivity and message interactivity, fully crossed), one continuous moderator (issue involvement), and two control variables (smoking status and biased message processing) on dependent variables proposed in our hypotheses. Pre-existing attitudes toward smoking were also controlled in all analyses that used the attitudes toward smoking as the dependent variable. To examine the mediating effects proposed by hypotheses, this study adopted the bootstrapping method recommended by Hayes (2013). Perceived interactivity Participants in the modality interactivity condition with the slider perceived the website as more interactive, F (1, 152) = 22.08, p < .001, ηp2 = .13, than their counterparts in the control condition. The difference between the high (M = 5.50, SE = .28) and low (M = 4.63, SE = .28) message interactivity conditions was marginally significant, with those in the medium message interactivity condition (M = 5.00, SE = .28) showing no difference from the other two conditions, F (2, 152) = 2.80, p = .06, ηp2 = .04. The analysis also revealed a marginally significant interaction effect, F (2, 152) = 2.53, p = .08, ηp2 = .03. In the presence of the slider, participants' perception of the interactivity of the website was not affected by the degree of message interactivity, showing almost the same ratings in the three message interactivity conditions, whereas in its absence, the manipulation of message interactivity was much more evident to participants (Figure 3). Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Modality interactivity X message interactivity interaction on perceived interactivity. Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Modality interactivity X message interactivity interaction on perceived interactivity. Interface assessment As hypothesized by H1, modality interactivity positively affected interface assessment. The analysis found that participants in the modality interactivity condition evaluated the interface as more intuitive, natural, and easy to use (M = 7.36, SE = .16) compared with those in the control condition (M = 6.61, SE = .15), F (1, 152) = 14.66, p < .001, ηp2 = .09. Thus, H1 was supported. Cognitive absorption Individuals reported being more absorbed while browsing the website when the site was equipped with the slider. Participants in this condition agreed that they were more absorbed in the browsing task and that their attention was less diverted while they were browsing the website (M = 5.58, SE = .18), compared with those in the control condition (M = 5.07, SE = .17), F (1, 152) = 5.30, p < .05, ηp2 = .03. Thus, H2 was supported. Attitudes toward the website Modality interactivity enhanced participants' attitudes toward the website. Participants in the slider condition evaluated the whole website as more exciting, cool, imaginative, entertaining, and having higher quality (M = 5.44, SE = .24) than did those in the control condition (M = 4.78, SE = .24), F (1, 152) = 4.75, p < .05, ηp2 = .03. The indirect effect of modality interactivity on attitudes toward the website was examined. The indirect effect through both interface assessment and cognitive absorption was significant when these mediators operated in serial (B = .08, SE = .05, 95% confidence interval [C.I.] from .01 to .22). Individuals perceived the website with modality interactivity as more intuitive, natural, and easy to interact with, and these positive perceptions of the interface were linearly associated with their level of cognitive absorption while browsing, which in turn predicted better attitudes toward the website (with participants rating it as more exciting, cool, imaginative, and high quality). Therefore, H3a was supported. Attitudes toward antismoking messages Participants in the slider condition were more likely to agree that the antismoking messages on the site were believable, informative, insightful, objective, interesting, and clear (M = 7.38, SE = .13) than participants in the control condition (M = 6.99, SE = .13), F (1, 152) = 5.47, p < .05, ηp2 = .04. The mediating effects of interface assessment and cognitive absorption were significant for attitudes toward antismoking messages (B = .04, SE = .02, 95% C.I. from .01 to .10). The slider gave rise to more positive assessments of the interface, predicting more self-reported absorption in the browsing task. This increased cognitive absorption was associated with greater agreement that the antismoking messages on the site are believable, informative, insightful, objective, and so on. Therefore, H3b was also supported. General attitudes toward smoking Modality interactivity appears to have persuaded participants that smoking is not an attractive behavior even after controlling for pre-existing attitudes toward smoking. After browsing the website, participants who interacted with the slider were less likely to say that smoking, in general, is sexy, pleasant, sociable, glamorous, calming, positive, or favorable (M = 2.29, SE = .10) than those in the control condition (M = 2.55, SE = .10), F (1, 151) = 4.45, p < .05, ηp2 = .03. The interaction effect between modality interactivity and message interactivity was also marginally significant, answering the RQ. Only under high message interactivity condition, participants who interacted with the slider were less likely to believe that smoking is an attractive behavior (M = 2.09, SE = .17) compared with participants in the control condition (M = 2.74, SE = .16), F (2, 151) = 2.81, p = .06, ηp2 = .04. The difference between the two conditions was significant at p < .05 according to Tukey's HSD post hoc test. However, the hypothesized indirect effect of modality interactivity on general attitudes toward smoking was not significant. Interface assessment and cognitive absorption did not show a significant mediating effect by the bootstrapping method. Thus, H3c was not supported. Message elaboration in the thought-listing measure The total number of thoughts generated by participants after browsing the website showed a significant difference, F (1, 151) = 4.11, p < .05, ηp2 = .03. The presence of the slider inhibited participants from generating thoughts about the antismoking messages. Participants in the slider condition generated a lower number of thoughts (M = 4.44, SD = .26), compared with the control condition (M = 5.10, SD = .26). Thus, H4 was supported. Self-reported elaboration A significant main effect of message interactivity emerged, F (2, 152) = 3.61, p < .05, ηp2 = .04, such that participants showed greater message elaboration in the high message interactivity condition (M = 7.87, SE = .16) than in the medium message interactivity condition (M = 7.29, SE = .16). The low message interactivity condition was in the middle (M = 7.61, SE = .17; Figure 4). Tukey's HSD post hoc test revealed that the difference between high and medium message interactivity conditions was significant. Thus, H5 was supported only for the difference between high and medium message interactivity conditions. Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Main effect of message interactivity on self-reported elaboration. Figure 4 Open in new tabDownload slide Main effect of message interactivity on self-reported elaboration. Mediating effect of self-reported elaboration Message interactivity significantly influenced participants' attitudes toward the antismoking messages on the website, F (1, 152) = 4.80, p < .01, ηp2 = .06. Participants were more likely to say that the antismoking messages are believable, informative, insightful, objective, interesting, and clear under the low message interactivity condition (M = 7.44, SE = .16) than under the medium message interactivity condition (M = 6.83, SE = .16). The high message interactivity condition (M = 7.30, SE = .16) scored in the middle. A bootstrapping analysis with self-reported elaboration as the mediator was performed to test H6. Message interactivity was dummy coded. The medium message interactivity condition was used as a baseline for dummy coding the other two conditions (i.e., D1: Low = 1, Med = 0, High = 0; D2: Low = 0, Med = 0, High = 1). Modality interactivity, smoking status, and degree of biased message processing entered as control variables. The analysis showed that the high interactivity condition had a conditional indirect effect on attitudes toward antismoking messages. When topic involvement is lower than the average by one standard deviation or is equal to the average, the degree of elaboration significantly mediated the effect of high message interactivity on their attitudes toward the antismoking messages (B = .20, SE = .09, 95% C.I. from .07 to .43; B = .16, SE = .07, 95% C.I. from .06 to .33, respectively). High message interactivity increased message elaboration, which, in turn, positively predicted participants' attitudes toward the messages such that the antismoking messages were deemed to be more believable, informative, insightful, objective, interesting, and clear, but only for those whose topic involvement is at or below average. In contrast, for those whose topic involvement is higher than the average by one standard deviation, this mediation effect was not significant. Therefore, H6 was supported. Summary of findings Modality interactivity, in the form of a slider tool, led to better interface assessment and higher cognitive absorption in the website. These two factors contributed to more favorable attitudes toward the antismoking site as well as its messages. Modality interactivity also made participants perceive smoking as less attractive behavior. It also significantly reduced the amount of message-related thoughts after browsing. In contrast, message interactivity enhanced message elaboration for participants. High level of message interactivity successfully elicited greater elaboration compared with medium level of message interactivity. This greater elaboration translated into more favorable attitudes toward the antismoking messages, but only for those with average or below-average involvement in the topic. Discussion While most persuasion research emphasizes the importance of systematic processing of messages for achieving attitude change, our study demonstrates that user engagement with the medium can achieve similar results, by employing tools of modern interactive media. Different types of interactivity are associated with different types of engagement, leading to persuasion via different mechanisms, as we discuss in the sections below. Persuasive potential of modality interactivity: cognitive absorption and heuristic processing Interacting with a modality interactivity feature on the website has the potential to absorb users in the website, and that interaction itself can foster better attitudes toward the messages, without necessarily going through systematic processing of the messages. This has parallels with the literature on “gamification” and the psychology of “fun-in-doing” (Shneiderman, 2004). Gamification, or the incorporation of game elements into nongame activities, is known to enhance users' motivation and sense of agency (Pavlus, 2010; Shneiderman, 2004), thereby leading to better attitudes toward marketing messages (Kankanhalli, Taher, Cavusoglu, & Kim, 2012) and learning outcomes (Muntean, 2011). Researchers have suggested several features that could induce “fun-in-doing,” such as using effective metaphors, attractive graphics, and sound (Shneiderman, 2004). Our study adds one more important feature that could lead to greater user engagement with media—an interactive feature that allows users to observe negative outcomes of smoking, but in a playful way. The fact that the sheer act of sliding across three images on a website (and observing changes in those images as a function of the sliding action) can get users to become cognitively absorbed in the site is a remarkable testament to the power of modality interactivity. In addition to demonstrating support for the theoretical mechanism of perceptual bandwidth expansion, this finding can have profound design implications for new and emergent media as well as practical applications for mass communicators interested in using the tools of modern interactive media for achieving persuasion goals. Indeed, the presence of the slider feature boosted participants' perception of interactivity so much that the level of message interactivity hardly made any difference. Increasing message interactivity enhanced participants' perception of interactivity of the website only in the absence of modality interactivity. It appears that modality interactivity provides more evident “interactive” features such as manipulating a slider across different pictures, whereas message interactivity offers more subtle ways of interacting with the content via hyperlinks to related content. Clearly, users are more appreciative of the different ways of interacting with information enabled by modality interactivity when they summarily evaluate a website's interactivity potential. The positive attitudinal effects of modality interactivity are qualified however by the reduction in the number of thoughts, which suggests inhibition of message elaboration and consequent tendency for heuristic, rather than systematic, processing. The effect of modality interactivity on users' attitudes toward smoking as an unattractive behavior also suggests that the persuasive effects of sliders rely on heuristic processing. Thus, interacting with the slider can persuade users in two ways: It can make users absorbed in the browsing task, leading to more favorable attitudes toward the website and its persuasive messages, or it can provide stronger exposure to persuasive peripheral cues (images of smokers' looks, brain, and lungs, in this case) and thereby promote the impression that smoking is an unattractive behavior that causes negative health outcomes. Both mechanisms are likely premised on the enhancement of the vividness of the antismoking images by employing the tools of modality interactivity. Similar tools, like zoom function and 3-D carousel, which serve to make static images appear more vivid and dynamic, are likely to be similarly persuasive. As Sundar et al. (2013) note, constructing alternative realities by providing enhanced vividness of content can persuade users. The vivid rendition of images on a slider depicting over-time deterioration of one's face, lungs, and brain in this study served to increase the “representational richness” of the portrayal of the long-term effects of smoking on one's health and enhance its realism, affording a better imagination of the consequences of smoking. Furthermore, the vividness of the change shown when the slider is moved probably absorbed users in the task and transported them to a mininarrative about the damage done to one's health because of long-term smoking. In this way, the vividness created by the slider tool of modality interactivity served to transport users to the alternative reality (of a smoker's fate) portrayed by the antismoking site, leading ultimately to more negative attitudes toward smoking. Future research can test this theoretical account by measuring perceived vividness and narrative transportation. If indeed these are critical outcomes of perceptual bandwidth expansion, then they should serve as serial mediators that follow interface assessment in influencing persuasive outcomes. Alternatively, they may operate independent of perceptual bandwidth, with modality interactivity directly affecting them en route to persuasive outcomes. Empirical determination of these possibilities can help us theoretically understand how the three different outcomes of modality interactivity—perceptual bandwidth, vividness, and transportation—operate together to affect persuasion. Furthermore, given that modality interactivity explained only 3% of the variance in cognitive absorption, future studies can try to extend the potential of modality interactivity by employing more tools in addition to slider—tools that would allow users to drag, mouse-over, zoom, swipe, and so on. Persuasive potential of message interactivity: message elaboration for low-involvement individuals The way in which message interactivity persuades users is theoretically quite distinct from that of modality interactivity. Our data suggest that message interactivity indeed enhances message elaboration for participants, as hypothesized by Liu and Shrum (2009) and Sundar, Kalyanaraman, and Brown (2003). High level of message interactivity successfully elicited greater elaboration reflected by the self-reported measure of elaboration, compared with medium level of message interactivity. The greater elaboration elicited by the high level of message interactivity translated into more favorable attitudes toward antismoking messages, but only for those with average or below-average involvement in the topic of smoking. Consistent with previous findings (Sundar et al., 2003; Tremayne & Dunwoody, 2001), this result suggests that contingency-based interactivity can actually trigger central processing of the website rather than function as a peripheral cue, but intriguingly, it does so for those who do not consider smoking as a particularly important issue in their life. According to well-established dual-process models, low-involvement individuals are supposed to be more receptive to heuristic cues, and less prone to systematically process persuasive messages. The current finding suggests that there is a way to direct these apathetic users to perform more message elaboration, namely by providing well-designed message interactivity, which allows them to interact with the core content of persuasive messages. When message interactivity successfully enhances elaboration, it subsequently enhances their attitudes toward the antismoking messages, showing evidence that central processing can indeed occur for low-involvement individuals. This study website had two important distinctions from the study design of Sundar et al. (2003). In that study, participants in the high interactivity condition had to go through more layers of a webpage than the medium interactivity condition because clicking subissues of each topic directed them to another webpage. In contrast, this study design enabled users to open each subissue on the same page, without moving to another layer of the webpage (see Figure 2 for a screenshot). Also, Sundar et al. did not adopt any navigational aid for high interactivity condition, whereas this study employed breadcrumbs for the high message interactivity condition. The effectiveness of this study design is evidenced by a null relationship between message interactivity and usability measures, F (2, 152) = 1.97, p = .14, observed power = .40. The null finding suggests that this study design successfully evens out the navigational load across the three message interactivity conditions, thus ruling this out as a potential confound in hyperlink-based operationalizations of message interactivity. Thus, the finding of this study implies that a high level of message interactivity can indeed enhance participants' elaboration of message content and affect attitudes toward the message without a concomitant increase in navigational load for users. This absence of load perhaps explains why the low-involvement participants were drawn into the message by our message interactivity manipulation. Future studies can formally test this hypothesis—for instance, there could be a two-way interaction between navigational load imposed by interactive websites and user involvement, such that low-involvement individuals process the message centrally only when the website is easy to navigate. Additive effect of modality and message interactivity One of the unique contributions of this study is the empirical demonstration of the additivity effect of interactivity as a peripheral cue and interactivity as a central argument. After taking into account pre-existing attitudes toward smoking, participants perceived smoking as a less attractive behavior when they interacted with the slider in the high message interactivity condition than in low or medium conditions. This finding suggests that message interactivity can boost the effect of modality interactivity and vice versa. When the website is equipped with high message interactivity, users get most motivated to interact with the persuasive messages—they are led to open the hyperlinks one by one, and observe the website responding to their actions. This two-way interaction allows them to be deeply involved in systematic processing. The slider feature is a very different tool, but it also provides users an opportunity to intimately interact with content, especially visual content—in this case, the images of a smoker's deteriorating face, brain, and lungs. As it turns out, this modality interactivity manipulation is a compatible heuristic cue, adding to the effect of message interactivity in shaping attitude change. As we noted earlier, this study exemplifies the argument of additivity hypothesis (Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994) by demonstrating that a strong heuristic cue successfully enhances the persuasive power of message interactivity, which is centrally processed. Future studies should try to operationalize modality interactivity in at least two different ways and examine whether the compatibility between a strong visual, heuristic cue and the content of the persuasive message indeed moderates the additive effect between modality interactivity and message interactivity. False versus real affordance: interactivity that achieves the central goal of the website Another intriguing finding of this study is the negative psychological effects of the medium message interactivity condition. When participants had two layers of hyperlinks and no breadcrumbs to guide their navigation, they were least likely to engage in message elaboration. The negative psychological impact of the medium message interactivity condition implies that the interaction between the user and the website should be designed strategically to achieve the central goal of the website—in this study, understanding information about smoking. When the hyperlinks embedded on the website lead users to read central information about the effects of smoking one by one, it is appreciated by users, as evidenced by the positive effects of the high message interactivity condition. However, when this promise of interactivity did not translate into any meaningful interaction with the website content, as happened in the medium-interactivity condition (which simply took users to a dense, textual page without fragmenting the information further), it only inhibited users from further message elaboration and resulted in negative attitudes toward the messages. Xu and Sundar (2014) found the same thing with their medium-interactivity condition, in which their participants could only click different product images (without any additional layers of interaction), thus lowering their motivation to further explore the site. They argued that the “click to change picture” function in their medium-interactivity condition was a “false affordance” in that its interaction design could not match user expectations (for action possibilities on the site) that were triggered by the function. It is an open question whether the perception of false affordance or that of textual density was responsible for the negative responses from our participants. Future studies can resolve this question by using a persuasive message that is less text-heavy while keeping the operationalization of message interactivity in this study the same. A practical implication for website designers is that interactive features should be designed carefully so that the interactions afforded by them are consistent with the outward appearance of those features. Otherwise, they might lead to worse outcomes than a website without any such features. Concluding remarks The findings of this study clearly show that differences in website interactivity can contribute to persuasion outcomes in significant ways. The website structure and its interactivity are not merely vessels or vehicles for delivering the content. Rather, the design of these technological factors significantly affects psychological responses from users. Our findings speak to the strong potential of modality interactivity as a persuasion tool. Employing a slider on the website is nothing but an expensive option for website designers. However, when the slider contributes to delivering information related to persuasion messages, the presence of this simple interactive feature can make an important difference to users' attitudes. Thus, deploying slide-based interaction techniques can add significant value to the website, especially when the goal of the site is consistent with what the slider can visualize, as exemplified by the current study. The current data also imply that message interactivity can be especially useful for designing websites where low-involvement individuals are the target audience. Given that younger populations, such as college students, would have fairly low issue involvement for health topics, the message interactivity feature suggested by the current study will be an effective persuasion tool for health-related websites targeting the youth. This study focused on understanding the psychological mechanisms by which interactive features affect user attitudes and beliefs. The role of modality interactivity in absorbing users and that of message interactivity in stimulating them to elaborate on the content can be fruitfully applied in a number of domains. Future research would do well to extend these findings with other types of interactivity as well as other forms of digital media. Future research would also do well to investigate the duration of persuasive effects noted in this study as well as the cumulative effect of multiple exposures over a period of time, so that campaigns can accordingly adjust the nature and dosage of user exposure to persuasive interactive tools. An important limitation of this study is that the sample consisted only of college students, with very few established smokers. Therefore, future research should seek to verify the theoretical models emerging from this study by testing them with samples of smokers and others who may be resistant to persuasion, in order to more fully understand the theoretical as well as practical value of interactivity in online communication campaigns. Acknowledgments This research is supported by the U. S. 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TI - How Does Interactivity Persuade? An Experimental Test of Interactivity on Cognitive Absorption, Elaboration, and Attitudes
JF - Journal of Communication
DO - 10.1111/jcom.12147
DA - 2015-04-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/how-does-interactivity-persuade-an-experimental-test-of-interactivity-3nzngnpJb8
SP - 213
VL - 65
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -