Abstract:
An issue of interest to researchers is the amount of explanatory information one needs to give
respondents making decisions in choice tasks. One way to resolve this issue is to let people
select only relevant information from interactive information sources. This resolution poses
unanswered questions: e.g., will respondents use the extra information, and potential
systematic differences in information users and non-users. To shed some light on this issue,
we let respondents access optional descriptive information about attributes in the form of
partial (verbal) and full (verbal plus visual) glossaries associated with a Best-Worst (BW)
web survey. Only a small minority with higher subjective product knowledge accessed the
glossary information. We found no significant difference between verbal and visual
information in attractiveness of use or impact on choice.
