The proliferation of mobile devices has made mobile shopping extremely popular among the digital natives. Due to the multitasking nature of mobile devices, users are often disturbed by various interruptions, such as incoming calls, SMSs and APP notifications. Prior studies suggest that interruptions likely affect users’ shopping experience and decision-making, but they find inconclusive results regarding how interruptions influence users’ behavior. Based on the flow theory and prior research on human–computer interaction, this study focuses on the interplay between the design of interruptions and human–computer interaction mode, and examines the effects of interruptions on users’ decision efficiency in a mobile shopping context. Three laboratory experiments were conducted to verify the research hypotheses. The results show that interruptions improve users’ decision efficiency and satisfaction when their content is irrelevant to users’ shopping task. When the content of interruptions is relevant to users’ shopping task, the interruptions reduce users’ decision efficiency. Furthermore, the interruptions reduce (improve) users’ decision efficiency when users browsed the mobile interface in a horizontal (vertical) manner. In general, this study makes one of the early attempts to investigate the effects of interruptions on users’ mobile shopping behavior and provides practical guidance for practitioners to design effective mobile marketing campaigns.

移动设备的普及使得移动购物在数字原住民中极为流行。由于移动设备的多任务处理特性，用户经常受到各种干扰的干扰，例如来电、短信和应用程序通知。先前的研究表明，干扰可能会影响用户的购物体验和决策，但他们发现关于干扰如何影响用户行为的结论尚无定论。本研究基于流程理论和人机交互的现有研究，重点研究中断设计与人机交互模式之间的相互作用，并研究移动购物环境中中断对用户决策效率的影响。进行了三个实验室实验来验证研究假设。结果表明，当内容与用户的购物任务无关时，中断可以提高用户的决策效率和满意度。当中断的内容与用户的购物任务相关时，中断会降低用户的决策效率。此外，当用户以水平（垂直）方式浏览移动界面时，中断降低（提高）了用户的决策效率。总的来说，本研究是调查中断对用户移动购物行为影响的早期尝试之一，并为从业者设计有效的移动营销活动提供了实用指导。