Thinking or feeling? The effect of information diversity on consumption decisions based on the social support framework

Purpose Instrumental and emotional information influence paradoxically on people’s decision-making, and similar influences are more evident in e-commerce scenarios where physical information is limited. This study aims to construct a systematic explanatory framework for the influence of multidimensional recommendation information diversity (RID) on users' click and purchase decisions based on the social support theory (SST). Design/methodology/approach This study analyses 453,176 data from 67,079 users of a Chinese e-commerce platform, applying lasso algorithmic techniques and cross-fit partialling-out (XPO) regression for empirical analysis. Findings The study finds that instrumental support information diversity (ISID) and emotional support information diversity (ESID) play divergent roles, and that the effects of both on user decision-making are inconsistent with mode-flip and marginal change. Differences in users' information craving and information overload processing mechanisms for instrumental and emotional information, leading to an inverted U-shaped effect of ISID on consumption decisions, while ESID has a U-shaped effect. Additionally, supplier certification eliminates the marginal change in ESID, and products with a high information standardisation degree eliminate the marginal change in ISID. Originality/value Research results reveal the opposing roles of the two types of RID and the application boundaries of their roles, providing empirical evidence for academic research.