Building and Eroding: Exogenous and Endogenous Factors that Influence Subjective Trust in Visualization

TL;DR

This paper investigates how both visualization features and individual viewer characteristics influence subjective trust in data visualizations, aiming to inform personalized and adaptive visualization design strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a model that captures the interactions between endogenous design features and exogenous user traits affecting trust, based on reanalyzed data from prior studies.

Findings

Design features like visualization type and color impact trust dimensions.

User characteristics such as visualization literacy modulate trust responses.

Interactions between design and user traits suggest pathways for personalized visualization design.

Abstract

Trust is a subjective yet fundamental component of human-computer interaction, and is a determining factor in shaping the efficacy of data visualizations. Prior research has identified five dimensions of trust assessment in visualizations (credibility, clarity, reliability, familiarity, and confidence), and observed that these dimensions tend to vary predictably along with certain features of the visualization being evaluated. This raises a further question: how do the design features driving viewers trust assessment vary with the characteristics of the viewers themselves? By reanalyzing data from these studies through the lens of individual differences, we build a more detailed map of the relationships between design features, individual characteristics, and trust behaviors. In particular, we model the distinct contributions of endogenous design features (such as visualization type, or the use of color) and exogenous user characteristics (such as visualization literacy), as well as the interactions between them. We then use these findings to make recommendations for individualized and adaptive visualization design.