Motivated search: Effects of choice accountability, issue involvement, and prior knowledge on information acquisition and use

The present experiments explore the impact of two types of motives (choice accountability and issue involvement) and prior knowledge on information search and use. The experiments show that accountable subjects examined more information, employed multiple stage search criteria, and were likely to use a more compensatory choice strategy. In addition, a second experiment demonstrates differential effects for accountability and issue involvement: accountability increases search effort regardless of level of prior knowledge; whereas, issue involvement increases search effort only when prior knowledge is low. Accountability also increases the integrative complexity of the thoughts reported during the search process, whereas, issue involvement has only marginal and incremental effects on integrative complexity. Implications of the results for understanding the effects of different types of motives on information acquisition and use are discussed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.