Not All Transparency Is Equal: Source Presentation Effects on Attention, Interaction, and Persuasion in Conversational Search

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: He, Jiangen, Liu, Jiqun
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author He, Jiangen
Liu, Jiqun
author_facet He, Jiangen
Liu, Jiqun
contents Conversational search systems increasingly provide source citations, yet how citation or source presentation formats influence user engagement remains unclear. We conducted a crowdsourcing user experiment with 394 participants comparing four source presentation designs that varied citation visibility and accessibility: collapsible lists, hover cards, footer lists, and aligned sidebars.High-visibility interfaces generated substantially more hovering on sources, though clicking remained infrequent across all conditions. While interface design showed limited effects on user experience and perception measures, it significantly influenced knowledge, interest, and agreement changes. High-visibility interfaces initially reduced knowledge gain and interest, but these positive effects emerged with increasing source usage. The sidebar condition uniquely increased agreement change. Our findings demonstrate that source presentation alone may not enhance engagement and can even reduce it when insufficient sources are provided.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_12207
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Not All Transparency Is Equal: Source Presentation Effects on Attention, Interaction, and Persuasion in Conversational Search
He, Jiangen
Liu, Jiqun
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Conversational search systems increasingly provide source citations, yet how citation or source presentation formats influence user engagement remains unclear. We conducted a crowdsourcing user experiment with 394 participants comparing four source presentation designs that varied citation visibility and accessibility: collapsible lists, hover cards, footer lists, and aligned sidebars.High-visibility interfaces generated substantially more hovering on sources, though clicking remained infrequent across all conditions. While interface design showed limited effects on user experience and perception measures, it significantly influenced knowledge, interest, and agreement changes. High-visibility interfaces initially reduced knowledge gain and interest, but these positive effects emerged with increasing source usage. The sidebar condition uniquely increased agreement change. Our findings demonstrate that source presentation alone may not enhance engagement and can even reduce it when insufficient sources are provided.
title Not All Transparency Is Equal: Source Presentation Effects on Attention, Interaction, and Persuasion in Conversational Search
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.12207