Regret Avoidance as a Measure of DSS Success

Assessing the value of decision support systems (DSS) in organizations is an important line of research. Traditionally, researchers adopt user satisfaction and decision performance as two measures of system success. In some cases, however, the use of DSS may not be driven by satisfaction. Instead, avoiding possible decision errors may be the reason for adoption, which indicates that regret avoidance is another useful measure of DSS success. Regret is a post-decision feeling about not choosing a better alternative. Recent behavior research has indicated that, instead of pursuing higher performance and user satisfaction, reducing decision regret is another important consideration for many decision makers. This research extends prior research on DSS evaluation by proposing regret avoidance as an additional measure of effective DSS use. Results from a laboratory experiment that involves using DSS for stock investment show the existence of a significant effect of reducing regret in situations where user satisfaction level is not high. Hence, it is important to include regret reduction in measuring DSS effectiveness.