Let's Gamble: How a Poor Visualization Can Elicit Risky Behavior

TL;DR

This study investigates how different visualization designs influence risk perception and decision-making in a gambling context, revealing that icon arrays promote sound choices while certain area-proportioned designs increase risky behavior.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on how visualization design impacts risk perception and decision-making, offering insights for selecting effective visualizations to communicate risks.

Findings

Icon arrays promote economically sound behavior.

Area-proportioned triangle and circle designs increase gambling likelihood.

Modeling of risk perception based on visualization choices.

Abstract

Data visualizations are standard tools for assessing and communicating risks. However, it is not always clear which designs are optimal or how encoding choices might influence risk perception and decision-making. In this paper, we report the findings of a large-scale gambling game that immersed participants in an environment where their actions impacted their bonuses. Participants chose to either enter a lottery or receive guaranteed monetary gains based on five common visualization designs. By measuring risk perception and observing decision-making, we showed that icon arrays tended to elicit economically sound behavior. We also found that people were more likely to gamble when presented area proportioned triangle and circle designs. Using our results, we model risk perception and discuss how our findings can improve visualization selection.