The Effect of Motivational Goals on Information Search for Tasks of Varying Complexity Levels

Not all search engine users perform equally well in terms of search result quality and search time. This variety depends on many different external and personal factors. In this work, we investigate how different motivational goals affects users' search behavior while conducting search tasks with different complexity levels. Specifically, we consider four different settings: 1: information search without a numeric goal specification, 2: information search with a required number of correct answers (criteria oriented reference norm), 3: information search with a required number of correct answers chosen by the user himself (individual reference norm) and 4: information search with the instruction to be better than another participant (social reference norm). Data of 115 participants is used for the analysis. To evaluate the relationship between search activities, motivational goals, task complexity and search outcome, we conducted several descriptive and statistical tests. Our results suggest amongst others that motivational goals have a significant impact on specific aspects of the search behavior while other aspects are unaffected. Furthermore, the recorded data shows that a motivational goal setting increases the task processing speed but also the error rates.