Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the influence of task complexity and information presentation format on information search pattern and the decision rule that a subject has employed. Previous research intended to test the traditional two-stage decision model has consistently shown that subjects switch to compensatory information search behavior when task complexity and difficulty decreases. Experiment 1 and 2 were intended to study whether or not the heuristic decision rules assumed in the dominance structure model were employed in various tasks. As a result, the use of the noncompensatory heuristic rules did not affect the task complexity. In experiment 1, The importance of dominant attributes in the selected alternative was bolstered more strongly in a post-decision than in a pre-decision, however, the importance of the dominant attributes in the competitive ones were de-emphasized much more low. In Experiment 2, the result on the attractiveness evaluation of attribute values showed that the evaluation of attractiveness of attribute values in the selected one was bolstered more strongly. But, the differences between a simple task and a complex task were not found in the pre- and post-rate of interalternatives search, the importance of attributes, and the attraction evaluation of attribute values. The result suggests that the decision even in a simple task can be also made via the stages assumed in the dominance search model. In Experiment 3, the effects of information presentation format on the way of combining information in the post-stage of decision making were investigated. The result showed that subjects used the noncompensatory heuristic rules even in the display condition that the compensatory rules can be employed easily. Thus, it seems that the compensatory normative rules are not used frequently in the decision making process, regardless of the task complexity and the information presentation format. Some possible limits and the future directions of the present research were discussed.