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Evaluating Effects of Environmental and Financial-Savings Messaging on Decision-Making Using Electrodermal Activity
Book chapter

Evaluating Effects of Environmental and Financial-Savings Messaging on Decision-Making Using Electrodermal Activity

Yigit Topoglu, Amanda Sargent, Jan Watson, Hongjun Ye, Rajneesh Suri and Hasan Ayaz
Advances in Neuroergonomics and Cognitive Engineering
28 Jun 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51041-1_24

Abstract

Decision-making Electrodermal activity Emotional arousal Message framing Messaging
Understanding how we make decisions has far-reaching practical implications from medicine to marketing as it is a fundamental cognitive construct intertwined in our everyday lives. Even though there is research on the influence of messaging on decision-making behavior, the effects from a psychophysiological perspective have not yet been fully understood. To assess the effects of environmental and financial-savings messaging on consumers’ decision-making behavior, we designed a study where participants made binary choices between different electricity plans before and after seeing a video message. Participants were given either a single environmental or financial-savings message, each also framed either positively or negatively. In this study, we used electrodermal activity (EDA), a wearable and non-invasive sensor that measures the electrical properties of the skin as an indicator of emotional arousal. We compared before and after-message EDA-based arousal levels and decision-making behavior around the messaging. Results show that messaging and framing seem to affect consumers’ emotional processes. Participants’ arousal levels significantly increased during decision-making after watching the message. Moreover, negative-framed messaging was significantly effective when in changing the arousal when two entirely different plans are being decided, while positive messages and financial-savings messages affected participants’ arousals significantly in the decisions between two plans that have the same structure, but different parameters. Moreover, watching an environmental message affected their plan preferences more than financial-savings messaging, regardless of the message’s framing. The findings indicate that EDA can provide supportive information related to consumers’ affective states, which can be valuable in social interaction and marketing research.

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1 citations in Scopus

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