Abstract
More and more IS-enabled technologies are being used within the context of ecosystems that include both hardware and software components that act together as a central platform; we term these ecosystems digital compound platform ecosystems. However, given the interconnectedness of components within these platforms, if an ambiguously sourced failure occurs within one of these ecosystems, users may blame and/or take action against components in the ecosystem that were not actually at fault. This study considers antecedents of both blame and discontinuance intent within such ecosystems given a system failure of ambiguous origins. We test manipulations for border strength, goal directedness, and resolution duration to understand their impact. We find that all three of these manipulations have an effect on user assessment of blame and discontinuance intent. Further, we establish that blame is not a required condition for discontinuance intent to occur.
Recommended Citation
Dunn, Brian Kimball; Jensen, Matthew L.; and Ralston, Ryan, "Eye of the Blamestorm: An Exploration of User Blame Assessment within Compound Digital Platforms" (2016). SIGHCI 2016 Proceedings. 2.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/sighci2016/2