Systematic Identification and Evaluation of Dark Patterns and Nudging at the Travel Service Market
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36690/2674-5208-2025-4-125-139Keywords:
dark patterns and nudgings, travel service market, consumer behavior, travel companies, digital customer behaviourAbstract
The primary objective of this study is to systematically identify and evaluate the dark patterns and nudging strategies within the travel service market. The research aims to assess how these practices are perceived by consumers in terms of manipulation and to examine their broader societal acceptability. To achieve these objectives, the study adopts a structured, multi-stage methodological approach. In the first stage, dark patterns and nudging techniques commonly used in the travel service sector are identified and categorized based on their key characteristics. The second stage focuses on evaluating consumer perceptions of these practices through the development of measurement scales capturing perceived manipulation and societal acceptability, followed by the administration of a structured survey. The final stage involves quantitative data analysis using statistical methods to assess the impact of dark patterns on consumer perceptions and attitudes. The findings reveal that dark patterns and nudging strategies are widely employed across travel service platforms, with practices such as hidden fees, urgency cues, and misleading choice architectures being particularly prevalent. Consumers generally perceive these practices as manipulative, often associating them with feelings of frustration, reduced trust, and ethical concern. The results further indicate that the societal acceptability of such practices is limited, especially when consumers perceive a lack of transparency or intentional exploitation of their decision-making processes. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of research on digital consumer protection by providing empirical evidence on the prevalence and perceived impact of dark patterns in the travel services sector. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers, platform designers, and researchers seeking to promote more transparent, ethical, and user-centered digital environments.
Downloads
References
Bhargava, A. (2023) Dark patterns: How air travellers are deceived into paying more needlessly. The Leaflet. Retrieved December 28, 2023, from https://theleaflet.in/dark-patterns-how-air-travellers-are-deceived-into-paying-more-needlessly/.
Bongard-Blanchy, K., Rossi, A., Rivas, S., Doublet, S., Koenig, V., & Lenzini, G. (2021). I Am Definitely Manipulated, Even When I Am Aware of It. It’s Ridiculous! – Dark Patterns from the End-User Perspective. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021 (June 2021), 763–776. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462086 arxiv:2104.12653.
Braca, A., & Dondio, P. (2023) Developing persuasive systems for marketing: the interplay of persuasion techniques, customer traits and persuasive message design. Ital. J. Mark., 369–412 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-023-00077-0.
Brignull, H., Leiser, M., Santos, C., & Doshi, K. (2023, April 25). Deceptive patterns – user interfaces designed to trick you deceptive design. Retrieved December 28, 2023, from https://www.deceptive.design/.
Campbell, M. C. (1995). When attention-getting advertising tactics elicit consumer inferences of manipulative intent: The importance of balancing benefits and investments. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 4(3), 225–254. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp0403_02
Crawford, Matthew B. (2015). "Introduction, Attention as a Cultural Problem". The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (hardcover) (1st ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 11. ISBN 978-0374292980.
Davenport, T., Beck, J. (2001). The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Cambridge: MA: Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 9781578518715
Di Geronimo, L., Braz, L., Fregnan E., Palomba F., & Bacchelli A. (2020). UI Dark Patterns and Where to Find Them: A Study on Mobile Applications and User Perception. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20), April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA 14 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376600.
Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380
Gray, C. M., Chen, J., Chivukula, S. S., & Qu, L. (2021). End User Accounts of Dark Patterns as Felt Manipulation. Association for Computing Machinery.
Kim, K., Kim, W. G., & Lee, M. (2023) Impact of dark patterns on consumers’ perceived fairness and attitude: Moderating effects of types of dark patterns, social proof, and moral identity. Tourism Management, 98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2023.104763.
Kim, W. G., Souji Gopalakrishna Pillai, Kavitha Haldorai, & Wasim Ahmad (2021). Dark patterns used by online travel agency websites, Annals of Tourism Research, 88, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.103055.
Kostynets Iu. V. (2020) Cognitive, system-reflexive and neuromarketing: innovative marketing of services in the conditions of digitalization. Actual problems of economy. № 3. P. 18- 24. (in Ukrainian)
Kostynets, I., Kostynets, V., & Baranov V. (2020). Pent-up demand effect at the tourist market. Economics and Sociology, 13(2), 279-288. doi: 10.14254/2071- 789X.2020/13-2/18.
Kőszegi, B., & Rabin, M. (2006). A model of reference-dependent preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(4), 1133-1165.
Kotler P., Kartajaya H., & Setiawan I. (2021) Marketing 5.0: Technology for Humanity. John Wiley & Sons.
Kotler, P., & Keller (2007) A Framework for Marketing Management 3rd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Mathur, A., Acar, G., Friedman, M.J., Lucherini E., Mayer J., Chetty, M., & Narayanan, A. (2019). Dark patterns at scale: Findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, CSCW (2019), 1–32.
McKnight, D. H., Choudhury, V., Kacmar C. (2002) Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology. Information Systems Research 13(3):334-359. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.13.3.334.81
Oliver, R. L. (1977). Effect of expectation and disconfirmation on postexposure product evaluations: An alternative interpretation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62(4), 480.
Oliver, R. L. (1980). “A Cognitive Model of the Antecedents and Consequences of Satisfaction Decisions”, Journal of Marketing Research, 14 (4), 460-69.
Oliver, R. L. (2000). Satisfaction: A behavioral perspective on the customer. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pappas, I. O., Mikalef, P., Dwivedi, Y. K. et al. (2023). Responsible Digital Transformation for a Sustainable Society. Inf Syst Front 25, 945–953 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-023-10406-5.
Shiv, B., Carmon, Z., & Ariely, D. (2005). Placebo effects of marketing actions: Consumers may get what they pay for. Journal of Marketing Research, 42(4), 383-393.
Stewart-Williams, S., & Podd, J. (2004). The placebo effect: dissolving the expectancy versus conditioning debate. Psychological bulletin, 130(2), 324.
Strebel, J., O'Donnell, K., & Myers, J. G. (2004). Exploring the Connection Between Frustration and Consumer Choice Behavior in a Dynamic Decision Environment. Psychology & Marketing, 21(12), 1059–1076. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20037
Teubner, T., & Graul, A. (2020) Only one room left! How scarcity cues affect booking intentions on hospitality platforms. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 39, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.elerap.2019.100910.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
Wirtz, J., & Bateson, John E.G. (1999). Consumer Satisfaction with Services: Integrating the Environment Perspective in Services Marketing into the Traditional Disconfirmation Paradigm. Journal of Business Research, 44/1, 1999, 55-66, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-2963(97)00178-1.
Witte, J.; Kenning, P., & Brock, C. (2023). Consequences of User Manipulation through Dark Patterns. ICIS 2023 Proceedings. 5. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2023/hti/hti/5.
Witte, J. (2023). Customer manipulation through dark patterns: Selected essays on digital customer behavior (Doctoral dissertation, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf). Universität Düsseldorf Dokumentenserver. URL: https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate-70493/Dissertation%20Janis%20Witte.pdf
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
