Abstract: While a great deal of research has been devoted to assessing consumer
     response to persuasive information, relatively little research has
     addressed consumer usage/response to objective information available from
     external data suppliers.  A model of objective information usage is
     developed that proposes that usage of objective information will be a
     function of overall expected utility, information choice, and
     confirmation/disconfirmation of expectations.  Utility expectations for
     items of information will be determined by both the uncertainty involved
     in the judgment task for which information is to be used and the
     performance of the information along a set of attributes, including
     relevance, credibility, and novelty.  It is hypothesized that under high
     levels of expected utility, information exposure will result in utility
     disconfirmation such that information is perceived to be less useful than
     initially anticipated.  The convergent validity of the information usage
     model is confirmed in an exploratory study of information usage for a
     policy analysis task.