Visual or Textual: Effects of Explanation Format and Personal Characteristics on the Perception of Explanations in an Educational Recommender System

ArXi:2603.25624v1 Announce Type: cross Explanations are central to improving transparency, trust, and user satisfaction in recommender systems (RS), yet it remains unclear how different explanation formats (visual vs. textual) are suited to users with different personal characteristics (PCs). To this end, we report a within-subject user study (n=54) comparing visual and textual explanations and examine how explanation format and PCs jointly influence perceived control, transparency, trust, and satisfaction in an educational recommender system.