Decision-Making in Recommender Systems: The Role of User’s Goals and Bounded Resources

Many factors that influence users' decision making processes in Recommender Systems (RSs) have been investigated by a relatively vast research of empirical and theoretical nature, mostly in the field of e-commerce. In this paper, we discuss some aspects of the user experience with RSs that may affect the decision making process and outcome, and have been marginally addressed by prior research. These include the nature of users' goals and the dynamic characteristics of the resources space (e.g., availability during the search process). We argue that these subjective and objective factors of the user experience with a RS call for a rethinking of the decision making process as it is normally assumed in traditional RSs, and raise a number or research challenges. These concepts are exemplified in the application domain of on-line services, specifically, hotel booking- a field where we are carrying on a number of activities in cooperation with a large stakeholder (Venere.com-a company of Expedia Inc.). Still, most of the arguments discussed in the paper can be extended to other domains, and have general implications for RS design and evaluation.