When Recommendations are Explainable: an Eye-Tracking Study Comparing How and What to Explain
This study investigates how explanation scope affects users’ understanding, trust, and attitude toward a recommender system (RS), and how these effects are mediated by visual attention and moderated by explanation modality. Drawing on eye-tracking data, we conducted a 3 (explanation scope: local, global, joint) × 2 (modality: text-only, text with illustrations) between-subjects experiment, with a control group with no explanation (N = 277). Results showed that joint explanations outperformed no-explanation conditions across all outcomes. Structural equat...