ABSTRACT

Entire journalistic empires have been built upon sensational headlines designed to elicit consumer attention and provide advertising partners with what they want most: eyeballs on content. Listicles are used widely for that purpose with little research addressing effective design and viewer perceptions of use. This study proposes the following questions: what are the psychological mechanisms behind a user’s experience with various listicle forms? How does the clickability and length of a listicle influence consumer responses? To answer these questions, a 2 × 2 between-subject experiment was conducted. Findings demonstrated that clickable listicles (vs. scrollable) provide users with greater control, which in turn positively predicted a variety of cognitive outcomes and emotional and attitudinal communicative outcomes. In addition, longer listicles led to greater frustration, which in turn negatively impacted these outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

摘要

整个新闻帝国都建立在耸人听闻的头条新闻之上，旨在引起消费者的注意并为广告合作伙伴提供他们最想要的东西：内容的眼球。Listicles 被广泛用于此目的，很少有研究解决有效设计和观众对使用的看法。本研究提出以下问题：用户使用各种列表形式的体验背后的心理机制是什么？列表的可点击性和长度如何影响消费者的反应？为了回答这些问题，进行了 2 × 2 的受试者间实验。研究结果表明，可点击的列表（相对于可滚动的）为用户提供了更大的控制权，这反过来又积极地预测了各种认知结果以及情感和态度的交流结果。此外，较长的清单会导致更大的挫败感，进而对这些结果产生负面影响。讨论了理论和实践意义。