Understanding the user perception of digital nudging in platform interface design

Abstract

Given the nascent understanding of user perceptions toward digital nudges in e-commerce, our study examines key factors: perceived usefulness, ease of use, trust, and privacy risks. Via an online experiment of 273 participants, we examined the influence of digital nudging interventions – social norms, defaults, and scarcity warnings – against a control group. Employing descriptive and inferential statistics, notable trust variations were found between default and scarcity warning groups versus controls. To assess these findings, we interviewed 11 information systems and psychology experts. This research enriches our understanding of digital nudges in e-commerce and provides design insights. Theoretical implications span from providing propositions in order to enhance user involvement, conducting narrative accompanying research, analyzing diverse time points of nudging. Practical implications focus on emphasizing to users their choice autonomy and the highlighting that defaults and scarcity warnings are designed to mitigate inherent heuristics and biases for combining nudging with boosting elements.