Do Users Appreciate Explanations of Recommendations? An Analysis in the Movie Domain

In recommender systems, explanations can be sent to users together with the recommendations in order to explain why a specific item has been chosen for them. Up to now, it is still unclear if users always appreciate explanations of recommendations. In this video, we present the general idea of our work regarding users' needs to include explanations in recommender systems. In our work, we developed different variants of a movie recommender system prototype corresponding to different types of explanations and conducted an online user study to evaluate related explanations. The experimental results show that users do not always appreciate explanations. Users want to see explanations when they are not satisfied with the recommended items. They expect to see explanations showing how well the recommended item meets their preferences. Moreover, explanation goals are interdependent and affect the overall satisfaction of users with the recommender system.