1 Introduction
Today’s consumers face more choice options and more information about these options than ever before. According to the standard economic perspective of utility theory, this development should help consumers find and choose options that best suit their needs, allowing them to lower their search costs and increase the utility they derive from their choices [
4,
42,
61,
62]. Marketers, researchers, and policy makers generally assume that lowering search, transaction, and decision-making costs empowers consumers and increases consumer welfare [
67]. Sophisticated algorithms plowing through vast amounts of consumer data, for example, allow online marketers to serve up just the right product or service, relieving consumers not only of the costs of searching but also of the unpleasant and difficult tradeoffs, which consumer choice often entails [
3,
49,
60]. Consider, for example, content recommendation systems such as those of Outbrain or Taboola, or content management systems such as that of Netflix or Amazon, which utilize big data and artificial intelligence for behavioral targeting. Such systems propose content that a person is likely to enjoy consuming given their current choice, allowing consumers to effortlessly discover content of interest. As another example, autonomous cars (e.g., Mobileye and Google) not only take over the arduous task of driving but they are also expected to be capable of learning to predict the preferences of different drivers for what type of route to take or what type of driving style to adopt. Rapid technological advances are also changing how the internet of things [
30] affects consumption, whether it is thermostats that learn about users’ temperature preferences (e.g., Google’s Nest) or voice-recognition systems that listen to and fulfill consumers stated desires and can learn to predict their needs and preferences (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Home, or Apple’s Siri).
In this speculative review article, we identify a potential paradox that can characterize choice in the age of automation, of artificial intelligence, and data-driven marketing (while this article focuses on marketing contexts, note that these issues have important implications in numerous other domains such as health care and care for the elderly).We contend that some of the welfare-enhancing benefits of those technologies can backfire and generate consumer reactance if they undermine the sense of autonomy that consumers seek in their decision-making. That may occur when consumers feel deprived of their ability to control their own choices: predictive algorithms are getting better and better at anticipating consumers’ preferences, and decision-making aids are often too opaque for consumers to understand (how they might influence preferences and decisions). Autonomous devices (such as smart cars or home automation solutions) offer the opportunity to eliminate costly consumer input altogether from certain decision environments—these devices can reduce or even eliminate the effort that a consumer must invest in choosing. The outcomes, derived from vast amounts of data about the consumer in question as well as about other consumers and the environmental context, may often correspond to consumers’ preferences more closely than if they themselves had chosen. A self-driving car can get a person to a desired location faster, with less effort, and more safely than if the consumer were controlling the vehicle. Yet, consumers seem ambivalent about self-driving cars, with many focusing on the efficiency gains but others reluctant to relinquish the driver’s seat [
50]. More generally, we consider conditions under which, rather than feeling more empowered in their choices, consumers may feel more alienated from their ability to choose and the impact this technological change may have on consumer well-being.
Drawing on a variety of perspectives, from philosophy to neuroscience, we provide a brief overview of extant research on consumers’ perceptions of choice and autonomy, discuss findings relevant to some of the unprecedented changes in the choice settings that consumers now face, and identify directions for future research that are important to consumers, managers, and policy makers. We cover this in four sections. First, we briefly review research that explores consumers’ pervasive beliefs in the autonomy of their actions and choices. Second, we discuss benefits of consumer autonomy and the benefits of choice for consumer well-being. The third section identifies circumstances under which choice can backfire and outlines psychological processes through which consumers can be harmed by choosing and feeling a sense of autonomy. Finally, we as khow recent technological advances may affect consumers’ perceptions of autonomy and well-being and suggest avenues for future research and applications.
2 The Need for Autonomy in Consumer Choice
Researchers from different academic quarters such as philosophy, psychology, and consumer research have investigated people’s need for autonomy, and in doing so, have used different terminologies: while some directly use autonomy, others have relied on constructs such as self-determination or free will. In our investigation, we treat those constructs are interchangeable and use them broadly as referring to one’s ability to “be [one’s] own person, and to be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply externally imposed upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one’s authentic self”[
19]. Autonomy provides a foundation to personhood, giving rise to notions of morality, character, ethics, or virtue [
28]. As such, autonomy in choice is akin to exercising free will, and self-determination is a state of exercising one’s autonomy. When describing extant research in this section, however, we rely on the same terminology as the authors.
Consumers think of themselves and their actions
as if they had free will [
68], to the point that they consider the existence of free will self-evident [
9] and exhibit unshakeable confidence in its existence [
73]. They think about the processes that lead them to a particular choice in terms of deliberation and intentionality, see their own actions as internally driven and motivated [
69], and come up with internally consistent reasons when the true drivers of choice are not immediately available to them [
45]. Even when other people’s actions are described as driven by external circumstances, people are still motivated to ascribe intent and responsibility [
20].
Why would consumers appear to have such an unshakeable belief in their own free will, and why do they, when prompted, describe their actions as resulting from deliberate choices and autonomous decisions? One stream of research views consumers’ belief in free will as a basic tenet of human psychology. DeCharms [
22] proposed the concept of personal causation, which refers to people’s tendency to take ownership of their actions and to attribute favorable outcomes to their own actions. Nuttin [
48] proposed that this tendency is hedonically motivated, and that people experience causality pleasure, a positive affect derived from personally causing an event, independently of the affect associated with the event itself. In other words, he proposed that people derive pleasure from seeing the impact of their actions on the world. His theory was refined by Deci and Ryan [
24], who found the experience of causality pleasure to be motivated by two basic psychological needs: the need for competence—the ability to impact the world in meaningful ways, and the need for autonomy—doing so in self-determined and autonomous ways. From this perspective, the impetus to choose and feel ownership of one’s choices is drivenby the resulting positive affect.
A second research stream takes a functional approach to understanding people’s belief in their free will, self-determination, and autonomy. Baumeister et al. [
7] propose that the belief in self-determined choices is a higher-order cognitive function that allows people to correct their behavior over time and align their choices with their long-term goals by providing them with a sense of continuity in intertemporal choices and a sense of ownership in moral dilemmas [
72]. Similarly, Wegner [
68] argues that the perception of their own free will allows people to develop a sense of self and of moral responsibility. As people experience continuity between their beliefs, thoughts, actions, and the outcomes that result from them, they can experience pride and closure when their actions are consistent with those beliefs and thoughts. Similarly, they can feel guilt, shame, and regret when their actions are inconsistent with their beliefs and thoughts. In contrast to the previous view, the belief in self-determination evolved to facilitate self-regulation rather than serving hedonic purposes.
In light of the functional importance of people’s beliefs in the autonomy of their own decision-making, one may wonder why these beliefs and perceptions are not constantly salient to them. Although people make hundreds of decisions every day, they are likely to spontaneously describe only few of those as choices; and among those self-described as choices, even fewer are expected to generate the subjective experience of autonomy. The two views presented above inform us about the types of decisions that give rise to a feeling of autonomy.
According to the self-determination perspective, the belief in free will responds to a need to connect one’s thoughts and desires to outcomes—a choice is an action that has “apparent mental causation,” for which one’s thoughts are seen as the “cause of the act” [
69]. Being free to choose from among multiple options in the pursuit of a goal (for instance, choosing one of several different ways to complete a task) imbues people with a sense of autonomy, which can generate positive affect and a heightened sense of motivation [
24]. Conversely, feeling restrictions in choice has been shown to undermine people’s motivation and to elicit psychological reactance [
15]. As such, any action that is internally and freely motivated and has discernable impact on the world is susceptible to fulfill consumers’ need for autonomy, but the conscious awareness of the act of choosing and of not being restricted in one’s decision-making are key to making the experience of autonomy salient.
The second perspective, which construes the experience of free will as an adaptive process underpinning self-regulation, entails a more restrictive view that the subjective experience of autonomy emerges from decisions involving an intertemporal or moral conflict [
72]. Because such decisions require acknowledging a contradiction between multiple selves (e.g., the “impatient” vs. the “patient” self, the “selfish” vs. the “selfless,” the “good” vs. the “evil”) [
5,
66], they make salient the mental process that arbitrates between the two options. In contrast, decisions that do not imply any form of struggle or internal conflict do not necessitate the resolution of the conflict, and the mental processes of the decisions remain inconspicuous to the person.
These two perspectives, which have yet to be experimentally pitted against one another, have different implications for choice architecture, marketing, and public policy. Consider the example mentioned in the introduction: a car manufacturer trying to promote self-driving cars. The manufacturer would want to avoid generating perceptions among users that they renounce their autonomy by being transported in such a vehicle. According to the first perspective (apparent mental causation), this could include assurances that users may still take control of the vehicle if they so choose to do so to avoid reactance or giving consumers the opportunity to customize features of the self-driving algorithm (driving style, choice of roads, etc.). On the other hand, if a feeling of struggle and conflict is the key to generating a sense of agency, then the manufacturer may paradoxically be better off emphasizing moral aspects of renouncing to drive a car; for example, by choosing to let a computer drive the vehicle, the consumer contributes to making the roads safer and transportation more energy efficient.