Masters Theses

Abstract

"In recent times, decision making under time pressure has become more common than ever and hence, it has become a hot topic for behavioral researchers. This research studies the effects of temporal constraints on users' decision quality and decision strategy. The paper primarily addresses two research questions: (i) Does time pressure affect decision quality? (ii) Does time pressure affect decision strategy? The decision accuracy and decision strategy of the participants were measured for three time-pressure conditions namely, No time pressure, Reasonable time pressure and Extreme time pressure. Research results from the past revealed that, Cognitive style is also observed to have an impact on decision quality under time pressure and thus, has also been introduced as a moderating variable to study the interaction effect. Physiological responses from users when subjected to time pressure have also been studied. The task instrument used to study the decision making behavior of users was a financial dashboard which consisted of financial information of three companies and the participants were asked to rank-order the companies in the order of their performance. Eye tracking was used to gauge the decision strategy. Electro-dermal activity, which is a measure of stress, was measured using a device called Q sensor. A pilot study was conducted with 20 participants to determine time pressure thresholds for the reasonable time pressure and extreme time pressure conditions. In the experiment phase, 20 users each were subject to reasonable and extreme time pressure conditions individually and were asked to provide their responses to a survey based on the task provided to them. Eye tracking and Q sensor results were also collected for all participants. Statistical analysis performed on the responses from the survey revealed that the decision quality increased as time pressure increased. Also, a majority of the users subject to time pressure adopted a non-compensatory decision strategy for making their decision. The fit between cognitive style and decision strategy was observed to have a significant effect on decision quality. It was also found that the analytical users performed better than the intuitive users under no time pressure. Statistical analysis performed on physiological responses revealed that stress experienced increased as time pressure induced on a participant increased"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Hong, Sheng

Committee Member(s)

Lockwood, Nick
Hall, Richard H.

Department(s)

Business and Information Technology

Degree Name

M.S. in Information Science and Technology

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Spring 2012

Pagination

viii, 47 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 55-56).

Rights

© 2012 Nagaratna Krishna Sneha Pochinapeddi, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Decision making -- Methodology
Decision making
Human information processing
Time pressure

Thesis Number

T 9982

Print OCLC #

815645509

Electronic OCLC #

785833120

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