Conversational agent voting advice applications: A comparison between a structured, semi-structured, and non-structured chatbot design for communicating with voters about political issues

Naomi Kamoen, Tessa McCartan, C. Liebrecht

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online survey tools that inform voters about political parties and their standpoints. Recent research shows that these tools may be improved by integrating a chatbot function that can provide on demand background information about the political issues. This new goal-oriented tool for information-seeking tasks is called a Conversational Agent Voting Advice Application (CAVAA). In an experimental study (N = 185) during the Dutch national elections of 17 March 2021, three CAVAA designs (structured with buttons, non-structured with a text field, and semi-structured with buttons and a text field) have been compared on tool evaluation measures (ease of use, usefulness, and playfulness), and political measures (perceived political knowledge and voting intention). Also, a comparison has been made between users with a high or a low educational level. Results show that the structured design was perceived as more playful compared to the non-structured design. Moreover, lower educated users rated the structured and the semi-structured design as easier to use than the non-structured design. Finally, this lower educated group also reported higher levels of political knowledge after using a CAVAA than the higher educated users. This suggests that CAVAAs can be a valuable tool to inform voters.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages17
Publication statusPublished - 2021
EventConversations: 5th international workshop on chatbot research - Online
Duration: 23 Nov 202124 Nov 2021
https://conversations2021.wordpress.com/

Conference

ConferenceConversations: 5th international workshop on chatbot research
Period23/11/2124/11/21
Internet address

Keywords

  • Voting Advice Applications (VAAs)
  • Conversational Agents
  • Chatbot design
  • Usefulness
  • Ease of Use
  • Playfulness
  • Voting intention
  • Political knowledge

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