| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 21, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 13, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1537483 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Phillip Regalia
pregalia@nsf.gov (703)292-2981 CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | February 29, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $224,675.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $224,675.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1109 GEDDES AVE STE 3300 ANN ARBOR MI US 48109-1015 (734)763-6438 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
MI US 48109-1274 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The design of social media interfaces greatly shapes how much, and when, people decide to reveal private information. For example, a designer can highlight a new system feature (e.g., your travel history displayed on a map) and show which friends are using this new addition. By making it seem as if sharing is the norm -- after all, your friends are doing it -- the designer signals to the end-user that he can and should participate and share information. This research focuses on two broad themes: what are the effects of design choices on changing what users think is appropriate to share and with whom? and how do norms interact with design to impact these decisions? Understanding how disclosure decisions are made and manipulated is critical as corporate and individual interests can be quite different. This is because norm-shaping can be used for benevolent purposes, such as guiding the end-user through an unfamiliar interface, but can also be used to manipulate the end-user and cause him or her to share information he or she would have preferred to keep private. The fact that such design patterns can be used both ways makes them particularly interesting: the user has no way of inferring the designer's intent, and policy makers and well intentioned designers have no mechanism for assessing the norm-shaping properties of their design choices. This research contributes to the development of tools to study user interfaces as embodiments of social norms as well as contributing more broadly to the discourse of privacy and sharing online.
The specific research goals are to (a) identify design patterns that shape disclosure norms, (b) experimentally determine the mechanisms by which they work (e.g., how patterns modify perception of norms and thus behavior), and (c) integrate these observations into existing theoretical frameworks (e.g., the "privacy calculus") that model how disclosure decisions are made. The PIs plan to use experiments to identify the impact of design on the perception of social norms and subsequent information divulging behavior. The experiments combine methodologies from experimental economics with Human Computer Interaction (HCI) methods. Additionally, the PIs will test econometrically an extension of the privacy calculus model that includes a preference for norm compliance, estimating an individual's willingness to trade-off between privacy preserving behavior and compliance with sharing norms. This research will demonstrate how tools from different disciplines can be used to enhance understanding of design in privacy and HCI. The results would feed back to the privacy, economics, and HCI communities.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Two projects were completed in this time. The first, titled, "A head to head comparison of social norms based nudges" is of interest to governments and academics alike as tools by which to motivate privately- and socially-beneficial behavior. The recognition that different nudges might be more effective for different individuals has also led to an increased interest in individual-specific nudges, where specific nudges are chosen for each individual. In this paper, we test the impact of three frequently used "social nudges" ("Reciprocity," "Social Norms," and "Personalization") against a "non-social nudge" ("Time Limit") in motivating individuals to engage in a personally aversive behavior - to interact with an email containing news from sources not aligned with his or her political affiliation. We further test whether someone familiar with the email's recipient is better than a random guess at selecting an effective nudge for that recipient. We find that most individuals believe that all three "social nudges" are more effective than the "non-social nudge" in motivating the recipient to interact with the email. On average, individuals identify "Reciprocity" nudge as the most effective nudge relative to the others. When the nudges are randomly chosen for their recipients, this intuition appears to be correct - "Reciprocity" is the most effective nudge relative to other nudges. But this is not true when the email uses the human-selected nudges. This research produces a comparison of the relative effectiveness of nudges and finds that "Reciprocity" outperforms other nudges when randomly assigned. However, this study also suggests that introducing human choice into the nudge assignment muddles its comparative strength.
The second is the design of a survey that unpacks the extent to which current and training social media designers can identify common nudges and/or their intended impact. Designers are implicitly and explicitly motivated by the companies they work for to achieve certain use objectives. These may include \engagement" or advertisement targets. Information disclosure can aid in both. For example, more information leads to better ads and more social disclosure leads to more use. These goals can become operationalized and integrated into the design tools themselves, thus encouraging the selection of design alternatives that promote disclosure. The designers themselves may not even be aware of this. We use a survey instrument we designed to show common nudging strategies used in social media design to increase engagement as well as information divulging. Our goal is to further understand how corporate incentives shape the corporate design-practice. We posit that higher level metrics (e.g., advertisement and engagement) can subtly shape design decisions to encourage disclosure and particularly to shape both individual and community norms around sharing. The role of affordances and contextualized norms in encouraging self-disclosure are starting to be understood but our research targets the, as-yet, unexplored influence of designers and corporations on how perception of norms can be shaped through the interface.
Last Modified: 06/29/2020
Modified by: Erin Lea Krupka
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