Designing Resource Allocation Tools to Promote Fair Allocation: Do Visualization and Information Framing Matter?

TL;DR

This study explores how the design of interactive resource allocation tools, including presentation format and framing strategies, can influence fairness in human decision-making, especially in humanitarian contexts.

Contribution

It demonstrates that individual-framed visualizations and text can reduce unfair allocations caused by group framing, offering new insights for designing equitable decision-support tools.

Findings

Individual-framed visualizations and text reduce unfair allocations.

Framing strategies significantly influence resource distribution decisions.

Design of interactive tools can mitigate cognitive biases in fairness.

Abstract

Studies on human decision-making focused on humanitarian aid have found that cognitive biases can hinder the fair allocation of resources. However, few HCI and Information Visualization studies have explored ways to overcome those cognitive biases. This work investigates whether the design of interactive resource allocation tools can help to promote allocation fairness. We specifically study the effect of presentation format (using text or visualization) and a specific framing strategy (showing resources allocated to groups or individuals). In our three crowdsourced experiments, we provided different tool designs to split money between two fictional programs that benefit two distinct communities. Our main finding indicates that individual-framed visualizations and text may be able to curb unfair allocations caused by group-framed designs. This work opens new perspectives that can motivate research on how interactive tools and visualizations can be engineered to combat cognitive biases that lead to inequitable decisions.