Decision-Making under Uncertainty: How the Amount of Presented Uncertainty Influences User Behavior

Abstract

In everyday life, people regularly make decisions based on uncertain data, e.g., when using a navigation device or looking at the weather forecast. In our work, we compare four representations that communicate different amounts of uncertainty information to the user. We compared them in a study by publishing a web-based game on Facebook. In total, 44 users played 991 turns. We analyzed the turns by logging game metrics such as the gain per turn and included a survey element. The results show that abundance of uncertainty information leads to taking unnecessary risks. However, representations with aggregated detailed uncertainty provide a good trade-off between being understandable by the players and encouraging medium risks with high gains. Absence of uncertainty information reduces the risk taking and leads to more won turns, but with the lowest money gain.