The Limits of Disclosure

Sammanfattning

This paper investigates how disclosure of AI- versus human-generated personalized pricing influences consumer evaluations of personalized pricing and retailers. Drawing on algorithm aversion literature, we examine whether dehumanization, procedural justice, and ulterior motives mediate these relationships, and whether subjective socioeconomic status (SES) moderates them. Using a scenario-based experiment with Swedish consumers (n = 289), participants were randomly assigned to receive either AI- or human-generated personalized pricing in an online retail context. Contrary to expectations, no significant differences emerged between conditions on satisfaction, retailer attitudes, or the proposed mediators. One possible explanation is that the study may have had limited statistical power to detect small effects, particularly due to insufficient number of participants. However, all three mediators were significantly associated with both outcomes in the expected directions. Exploratory findings further suggested that lower-SES consumers may experience stronger dehumanization responses to AI-driven pricing. Overall, the findings suggest that pricing-source disclosure alone may be insufficient to trigger negative consumer responses in familiar, low-stakes retail settings where AI systems have become increasingly normalized.