AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DECISION-MAKERS, DECISION AIDS AND DECISION-MAKING EFFORT

This paper reports the results of two laboratory experiments designed to assess the impact of decision aid use on effort expenditures by dec ision makers. The traditional assumption in the decision support syste ms (DSS) literature is that if decision makers are provided with expan ded processing capabilities they will use them to analyze problems in more depth and as a result make better decisions. Empirical studies in vestigating the relationship between DSS and decision quality have not borne this out. The explanation for such outcomes could be found in b ehavioral decision making theories. The literature on behavioral decis ion making indicates that the conservation of effort may be more impor tant than increased decision quality in some cases. If this is so, the n the use of a decision aid may result in effort savings but not impro ved decision performance. The two experiments reported here compare th e information processing effort expended by users of a decision aid de signed to support preferential choice problems to unaided decision mak ers. Effort is measured by deriving information use and processing mea sures from concurrent verbal protocols. The results support the concep t of effort minimization. Total information use did not increase with the availability of the decision aid, rather the decision aid was used in such a way as to replace, rather than augment, decision maker effo rt. In the various aided conditions, the decision aid accounted for fr om 25-40% of the total information processed by the decision maker. Th e results further indicate that the impact of the decision aid is more pronounced in task settings with a larger number of alternatives to c hoose from. The implications of these results are discussed in the con text of both DSS research and design.