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International Workshop on Chatbot Research and Design

CONVERSATIONS 2021: Chatbot Research and Design pp 160–175Cite as

Conversational Agent Voting Advice Applications: A Comparison Between a Structured, Semi-structured, and Non-structured Chatbot Design for Communicating with Voters About Political Issues

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 13171))

Abstract

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are online survey tools that inform voters about political parties and their standpoints. Recent research shows that these tools may be improved by integrating a chatbot function that can provide on demand background information about the political issues. This new goal-oriented tool for information-seeking tasks is called a Conversational Agent Voting Advice Application (CAVAA). In an experimental study (N = 185) during the Dutch national elections of 17 March 2021, three CAVAA designs (a structured design with buttons, a non-structured design with a text field, and a semi-structured design with buttons and a text field) have been compared on tool evaluation measures (ease of use, usefulness, and playfulness), and political measures (perceived political knowledge and voting intention). Also, a comparison has been made between users with a high or a low educational level. Results show that the structured design is perceived to be more playful than the non-structured design. Moreover, lower educated users rate the structured and the semi-structured design as easier to use than the non-structured design. Finally, lower educated users also report higher levels of political knowledge after using a CAVAA than higher educated users. This suggests that CAVAAs can be a valuable tool to inform voters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Naomi Kamoen, Tessa McCartan & Christine Liebrecht

Authors
  1. Naomi Kamoen
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  2. Tessa McCartan
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  3. Christine Liebrecht
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Naomi Kamoen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

  2. VU Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

  3. CERTH-ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Symeon Papadopoulos

  4. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Effie L.-C. Law

  5. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Ewa Luger

  6. Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway

    Morten Goodwin

  7. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

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Kamoen, N., McCartan, T., Liebrecht, C. (2022). Conversational Agent Voting Advice Applications: A Comparison Between a Structured, Semi-structured, and Non-structured Chatbot Design for Communicating with Voters About Political Issues. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13171. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94890-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94890-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-94889-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-94890-0

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