In the stock market, a large amount of stock price data is generated every day, and in order to improve the visualization of data, the way of dynamically displaying data is widely used. When you click on the details page of a stock, the page will animate you with real-time quotes and historical data. Will this dynamic presentation have a further impact on investors' risk perception and investment decisions compared to still images?
Junghan Kim from Singapore Management University and Arun Lakshmanan from the State University of New York at Buffalo found that the way animation presents data is becoming more common, while in the field of marketing, there is little research on how animated data can affect consumer decision-making. Therefore, the authors studied this phenomenon and found that dynamic data (such as stock or commodity prices) enhance consumers' risk judgments.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" > data presentation method and risk judgment</h1>
The way to present data can be divided into two types: digital and graphical. Compared to displaying numbers directly, graphical displays provide a more recognizable way to help us get trends from our data. Among them, static graphics display data is a common and effective method, and the use of dynamic pictures is a further emphasis on the data change trend on a static basis. The dynamic display of data strings draws the viewer's attention to changes over time in real time, enhancing the significance of the transitions between data points.
It has been noted that when a stock's price is presented in a static graphical fashion, its price extremes (highest and lowest prices) appear more pronounced than the rest of the price, and this relative significance makes it more likely to be used to infer risk. Similarly, the dynamic presentation further enhances the transition salience of the data over time compared to static graphs, thereby improving risk judgment.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > mediation mechanism</h1>
A large number of studies have demonstrated that data conversion significance has an impact on risk judgment, but there is little discussion of the mechanism of how transformation significance affects risk judgment. Based on this, this study proposes the hypothesis that Utilization of Transitions is the mediating variable that the significance of conversion affects the risk judgment. Conversion utilization is defined as the extent to which an individual makes risk judgments based on changes in data values from one point in time to the next. In other words, conversion utilization is the degree to which individuals use data to transform significant information.
Conversion significance enhances conversion utilization. When an individual makes a judgment based on a given amount of data, his or her judgment depends on the characteristics of the data. When data is represented using motion graphics, its transformation over time is significantly enhanced, and individuals are more likely to rely on this conversion information to make risk judgments, that is, conversion utilization is improved.
The increase in conversion utilization ultimately increases the risk judgment. Increased conversion utilization means that individuals increase the utilization of data conversion significance information, and individuals rely more on data conversion significance to make judgments. In other words, the degree of change in the data perceived by the individual over time at this time indicates that the data fluctuations perceived by the individual increase. Studies have shown that fluctuations in data are risk-related, so an increase in conversion utilization ultimately improves risk judgment.
In summary, the study believes that increasing the significance of a particular stimulus will guide the audience's attention, and the information contained in the stimulus is more likely to be used in the process of the audience's judgment, and ultimately have a significant impact on the judgment. When you use dynamic presentation to present data, the amount of data change over time is highlighted, that is, the time transformation is significantly enhanced. This will lead to an increase in the utilization of information that fluctuates over time, ultimately enhancing users' risk perceptions.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="35" > experimental study</h1>
This study tested the research hypothesis through a series of experiments. In Experiment One, 85 participants were randomly assigned to dynamic and static graph groups and told that they needed to make a judgment about the risks of the company after understanding the situation. The study first introduced the basic situation of a virtual company to the participants, and then showed the participants a chart of the company's stock trading price for 21 days, and finally asked the participants to judge the company's risk. In order to measure how well the participants actually viewed the information, the participants' eye movements were tracked throughout the study using eye trackers. The results confirmed that the way the data was displayed dynamically (as opposed to static) enhanced the significance of the time transition and ultimately made a greater risk judgment for the company.
To demonstrate the hypothesis proposed continuous mediation mechanism, Experiment TWO recruited 190 participants on the Mturk platform. Similar to Experiment 1, participants were randomly assigned to dynamic and static groups, and participants filled out questionnaires after viewing the company's stock price movement chart. Five questions in the questionnaire were used to measure the significance of time conversion (whether the daily change in stock prices was significant, vivid, obvious, visible and clear), four questions were used to measure the conversion utilization rate (I judged the risk of the following stocks: daily changes in stock prices, changes in stock prices from the previous day to the next day, frequency of daily changes in stock prices, and fluctuations in stock prices throughout the day), followed by risk judgment questions and demographic information.
The experiment analyzes continuous mediation based on the analysis method of bootstrap. The results show: First, the dynamic display significantly enhances the significance of the time conversion. Second, after controlling the display mode, the time conversion significance has a positive and significant impact on the conversion utilization rate. Third, the conversion utilization rate has a significant impact on the risk judgment. Fourth, when the conversion significance and conversion utilization rate both enter the regression model, the impact of the display mode on the risk judgment is no longer significant. Importantly, the confidence interval for bias corrected 95% CI (CI= [0.004,0.1482]) of the indirect effect from the display to the risk judgment does not contain zeros, satisfying the validation requirements for continuous mediation, so the hypothesis of the study is validated.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="37" > marketer, what would you do? </h1>
As an increasingly common data display mode, motion graphics can display data by enhancing the significance of conversion, thereby improving conversion utilization and ultimately influencing users' judgment and decision-making in the market. The conclusions of the study provide important implications for investors in the market and market regulators.
For investors, investors in the market should be more cautious about the data visible in the market, and different ways of showing the data may lead to bias for investors. For example, the display of motion graphics can enhance risk perception, which may lead to the abandonment of investment opportunities and thus the possibility of obtaining returns. From a consumer welfare perspective, the return on investment abandoned can adversely affect a consumer's financial situation.
From the perspective of market regulators, dynamic and static graphical presentations can be used as an intervention tool. In the event that the investment market is overheated, market regulators can use dynamic graphic displays to enhance investors' risk perception, thereby preventing retail investors from making irrational investment decisions. In the case of market downturn, you can consider switching to a static display method to enhance investors' investment confidence and stimulate market vitality.