THE INFLUENCES OF USER CHARACTERISTICS ON PERFORMANCE IN A LOGISTICS DSS APPLICATION

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are widely used in logistics decision a pplications, and a large number and variety of systems are commerciall y available. We investigate the contributions of user characteristics including experiences, data preferences, intuition, and effort to deci sion performance in a logistics DSS context. The study includes a labo ratory experiment in which decision makers with varied experiences use d a DSS to make facility network design decisions for problems of vary ing complexity. Two variants of the DSS are utilized in order to exami ne the interactions of a DSS decision aid with user characteristics. W e find that intuition and effort are associated with decision-making p erformance. High analytic ability is not related to intuition, however . Education and previous experience are associated with performance. Y et these characteristics are also unrelated to intuition. Decision mak ers who highly value disaggregated data provided by the DSS tend to pe rform poorly. Also, the results suggest that the effects of users' exp eriences and preferences on performance are influenced by an analytica l decision aid.