Article ID: | iaor20123291 |
Volume: | 53 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 1 |
End Page Number: | 11 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2012 |
Journal: | Decision Support Systems |
Authors: | Kim Byung Cho, Park Yong Wan |
Keywords: | security |
This paper demonstrates that consumers make incorrect inferences about security/convenience tradeoff. We find the evidence that consumers tend to infer unobservable security quality from observable convenience and that their inferences are not always correct. In four studies, we examine user perceptions of wireless Internet service quality, with an aim to understand consumers' irrational choice of a dominated product over a dominant option. Our results indicate that consumers make inference in security from convenience using a zero‐sum heuristic and that they believe in improving security in return for losing convenience. In a choice setting, we empirically show that security perception, as well as convenience, influences consumers' product choices, contradicting the common view of existing literature that convenience is the sole driver of consumer choice. Our findings show that spontaneous and extensive education of consumers about security makes a modest impact on their inference making.