Triggered essential reviewing: the effect of technology affordances on service experience evaluations

Abstract

This paper responds to the recent call for understanding the nature and consequences of the digital mediation of everyday experiences. We do so in the context of online opinion sharing. We propose that the unique design features of mobile computing devices and the intention and purpose of their users, meld into a technology affordance we label: Triggered essential reviewing. We empirically investigate the effect of this technology affordance on opinion characteristics (i.e., timing and length), and outcomes (i.e., opinion valence and content). We find that triggered essential reviewing engenders opinions that cover a narrower range of aspects of the experience and that it produces a negative evaluative bias—a bias that mitigates over time. Our work makes two contributions to the application of affordance theory in Information Systems. First, it shows the importance of IT design in studying experiential computing. While not taking a deterministic view of technology, we validate the notion that different technology designs produce a variation of effects around a predictable central tendency. Second, it empirically demonstrates that the affordances of embodied digital experiences have an effect on actual behavior as well as on the outcome of the experience itself.

Keywords:

• technology affordance
• mobile devices
• user-generated content
• opinion platforms

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the help of Myle Ott in data collection and analysis. The work also benefitted from valuable feedback from the review panel and the members of the Digital Data Streams Lab at Louisiana State University and the University of Pavia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gabriele Piccoli

About the authors

Gabriele Piccoli is Professor of Information Systems (IS) at Louisiana State University (USA), on leave from the University of Pavia (Italy), and the director of the Digital Data Streams Lab. His current research, teaching, and consulting interests focus on the strategic application of IS and the use of technology to enable customer service. His research has appeared in the European Journal of Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Journal of AIS, Decision Sciences Journal, MIS Quarterly Executive, Communications of the ACM, Harvard Business Review, as well as other academic and applied journals. He is the author of the textbook Information Systems for Managers: Text and Cases, published by Prospect Press.