Investigating the Effectiveness of Persuasion Strategies on Recommender Systems

The paper examines the persuasive effect of explanations on the intention of users to use recommended items. For the needs of the present study, a movie Recommender System was built so as to elicit participants' preferences about movies and then a movie is recommended in order to investigate the effect of the application of Cialdini's Influence Principle(s), implemented as recommendation explanations, on the users' intention to watch the movie. Surprisingly, the experimental results of the study suggest that if a Recommender System provides persuasive explanations for a product/service that is close to a user's preferences and tastes then it changes his/her behaviour.