WHAT AFFECTS WEB CREDIBILITY PERCEPTION? AN ANALYSIS OF TEXTUAL JUSTIFICATIONS

In this paper, we present the findings of a qualitative analysis of 15,750 com- ments left by 2,041 participants in a Reconcile web credibility evaluation study. While assessing the credibility of the presented pages, respondents of the Re- concile studies were also asked to justify their ratings in writing. This work attempts to give an insight into the factors that aected the credibility asses- sment. To the best of our knowledge, the presented study is the most-recent large-scale study of its kind carried out since 2003, when the Fogg et al. -How do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites? A study with over 2,500 parti- cipantsu0027 paper was published. The performed analysis shows that the findings made a decade ago are still mostly valid today despite the passage of time and the advancement of Internet technologies. However we report a weaker impact of webpage appearance. A much bigger dataset (as compared to Foggu0027s stu- dies) allowed respondents to reveal additional features, which influenced the credibility evaluations.