Zhang Ning, Hu Hsin-Li, Tso Scarlet H, Liu Chunqun
College of Management, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China.
School of Communication, Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 7;14:1110808. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1110808. eCollection 2023.
Users of mobile phone applications (apps) often have to wait for the pages of apps to load, a process that substantially affects user experience. Based on the Attentional Gate Model and Emotional Contagion Theory, this paper explores the effects of the urgency expressed by a spokes-character's movement in the loading page of a social app the app type on users' switching intention through two studies. In Study 1 ( = 173), the results demonstrated that for a hedonic-orientated app, a high-urgency (vs. low-urgency) spokes-character resulted in a lower switching intention, whereas the opposite occurred for a utilitarian-orientated app. We adopted a similar methodology in Study 2 ( = 182) and the results showed that perceived waiting time mediated the interaction effect demonstrated in Study 1. Specifically, for the hedonic-orientated (vs. utilitarian-orientated) social app, the high-urgency (vs. low-urgency) spokes-character made participants estimate a shorter perceived waiting time, which induces a lower user switching intention. This paper contributes to the literature on emotion, spokes-characters, and human-computer interaction, which extends an enhanced understanding of users' perception during loading process and informs the design of spokes-characters for the loading pages of apps.
手机应用程序（应用）的用户常常需要等待应用页面加载，这一过程会极大地影响用户体验。基于注意力闸门模型和情绪感染理论，本文通过两项研究探讨了社交应用加载页面中代言人角色动作所表达的紧迫感以及应用类型对用户转换意愿的影响。在研究1（N = 173）中，结果表明，对于享乐主义导向的应用，高紧迫感（与低紧迫感相比）的代言人会导致较低的转换意愿，而对于功利主义导向的应用则情况相反。我们在研究2（N = 182）中采用了类似的方法，结果显示感知等待时间介导了研究1中所呈现的交互效应。具体而言，对于享乐主义导向（与功利主义导向相比）的社交应用，高紧迫感（与低紧迫感相比）的代言人使参与者估计的感知等待时间更短，从而导致更低的用户转换意愿。本文为情绪、代言人角色和人机交互方面的文献做出了贡献，扩展了对加载过程中用户感知的深入理解，并为应用加载页面的代言人角色设计提供了参考。
