Measuring the emotional impact of websites: a study on combining a dimensional and discrete emotion approach in measuring visual appeal of university websites

ABSTRACT

In this paper a combined dimensional and discrete emotional approach is introduced for measuring emotions elicited by the visual appeal of websites. An online experiment was set out to measure the emotional experience of twelve screenshots of university websites. By indicating a position on the dimensions of pleasure and arousal, participants were asked to score corresponding emotion words that would relate to their position on the dimensions, plus random emotion words that were not related to their position. It was expected that scores on the corresponding emotion words would be higher than scores on the random emotion words. As expected, results showed that corresponding emotion words scored significantly higher, indicating that a combined dimensional and discrete emotion approach was feasible in measuring emotional experience elicited by visual appeal of websites.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  A. General Literature
  A.0 GENERAL

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

Keywords:
emotional response, visual appeal, website interfaces