Caught Between Compliance and Resistance: Understanding Users’ Conflicted Responses to Confirmshaming Techniques

Despite the widespread use of confirmshaming in digital interfaces, prior research has largely focused on its impact on user compliance, with limited attention to its negative business consequences and underlying psychological mechanisms. To address this gap, we draw on dual-process theory and psychological reactance theory to theorize how confirmshaming produces competing psychological effects through two distinct pathways: experienced coercion and financial cost perception, which exert differential influences on customer word of mouth (WOM) intention. Our online experiment shows that confirmshaming increases customer acceptance of promotional offers by amplifying financial cost perception, while simultaneously reducing positive WOM intention through increased experienced coercion. These dual mechanisms reveal a critical trade-off: compliance gains come at the expense of customer advocacy. Theoretically, our study contributes to IS literature on digital nudging by demonstrating that reactance responses compete with rational decision-making processes. Our findings suggest that platforms can reconsider the use of manipulative designs, as short-term benefits may be offset by reduced customer WOM intention.