Ivan Gautschi receives Ernst-Blickle-Studienpreis
MSc MTEC graduate Ivan Gautschi has been awarded the 2018 “Ernst-Blickle-Studienpreis” by the SEW Eurodrive Foundation. He received the prize for his outstanding Master’s thesis entitled “Impact of general privacy concerns on chatbot design elements’ influence on people’s willingness to disclose personal information”.
Mr. Gautschi’s research explores the impact that a chatbot’s communication style has on how people perceive the chatbot’s characteristics, and how this in turn influences people’s willingness to disclose personal information to the chatbot. Furthermore, the thesis analyses the influence of general privacy concerns on the relationship between the chatbot’s characteristics and people’s willingness to disclose personal information. The thesis focused on a medical environment, where disclosure of personal information contributed to a medical diagnosis and recommendations.
The results described in the thesis suggest that the chatbot’s communication style has no effect on how the chatbot’s characteristics are perceived. The chatbot’s characteristics do have an influence on people’s willingness to disclose personal information, but only if they are related to the task the chatbot was intended for, and not when they merely give rise to positive emotions. Last but not least, the research demonstrated that general privacy concerns influenced all studied relationships between the chatbot’s characteristics and people’s willingness to disclose personal information. In other words, this result suggests that by designing a chatbot with certain characteristics, general privacy concerns can be overridden.
The thesis was conducted at the Chair of Technology Marketing and supervised by Joseph Ollier and Professor Florian von Wangenheim.
The department congratulates Ivan Gautschi and the Chair of Technology Marketing on their achievements!
Ernst-Blickle-Studienpreis
The external page Ernst-Blickle-Studienpreis is awarded annually to students from the subject areas of electrical and mechanical engineering, management and economics. In addition to the quality of the thesis content and its academic value, factors such as an appropriate timeframe and the linking of different disciplines are also key selection criteria. The award comes with a cash prize of 2,500 euros.
At the awards ceremony in the Bruchsaler castle on the Upper Rhine in Germany, 22 Master’s theses were honoured by the foundation’s Board of Trustees.