The Self-Destructive Nature of Dark Patterns: Revealing Negative Impacts on Usability and Trust in Service Providers

"Dark patterns,'' deceptive designs that intentionally lead users to take actions benefiting service providers, are widely used, especially in digital marketing. The major impacts of dark patterns includes time or money costs incurred by deceived users. However, there are other possible unintended impacts on the user experience. In particular, users who recognize and avoid dark patterns (non-deceived users) may also experience stress and frustration from the extra time and effort required. In this study, we focus on non-deceived users and examines the negative usability impact caused by avoiding dark patterns. Through this usability study using web pages containing dark patterns, we explored the possibility that the cost incurred by avoiding dark patterns may be a factor that undermines trust in service providers.