Investigating the Relationship between In‐Situ User Expectations and Web Search Behavior

Abstract

ABSTRACTPre‐adoption expectations often serve as an implicit reference point in users' evaluation of information systems and are closely associated with their goals of interactions, behaviors, and overall satisfaction. Previous studies have involved simulated user expectation as a feature in user modeling to model biased search actions. However, there is still little direct evidence revealing the relationships between users' expectations and their actual search behaviors. To address the gap, we collected 448 query sessions from participants in a controlled‐lab user expectation study and gathered direct query‐level feedback on their expected information gains (e.g., number of useful pages) and expected search efforts (e.g., clicks and dwell time) under each query. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to explicitly examine the connections between different aspects of in‐situ search expectations and user behaviors. Findings on user expectation advance our understanding of users' search decision‐making and evaluation strategies and will also facilitate the design and evaluation of expectation‐aware user models, metrics, and IR systems.