The Use of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Measurement to Understand Consumer Emotions - A literature review and a call for action

Sep 2, 2026

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Electrodermal activity (EDA) serves as a psychophysiological marker of emotional arousal, first adopted in consumer research in 1979 and now increasingly used due to greater access to recording equipment. Calls to integrate physiological data in consumer studies have further amplified interest in EDA as a means to capture emotional responses in real time. A critical review of EDA-based consumer-emotion studies shows inadequate reporting of data recording and analysis procedures, which limits replicability. Recommendations from psychophysiology research are provided to support meaningful, transparent EDA measurement reporting.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatDOCX

Pages55

Reading Time19 min

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Abstract

Introduction

The Use of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Measurement to Understand Consumer Emotions – A literature review and a call for action Delphine Caruelle PhD Candidate, Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, 0484 Oslo, Norway, Email: delphine.caruelle@bi.no Anders Gustafsson Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, 0484 Oslo, Norway Email: anders.gustafsson@bi.no Poja Shams Lecturer in Business Administration, Karlstad University, 651 88 Karlstad, Sweden Email: poja.shams@kau.se Line Lervik-Olsen Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School, 0484 Oslo, Norway Email: line.lervik-olsen@bi.no The Use of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Measurement to Understand Consumer Emotions – A literature review and a call for action Abstract Electrodermal activity (EDA) is a psychophysiological indicator of emotional arousal. EDA measurement was first employed in consumer research in 1979 but has been scarcely used since. In the past decade, the ease of access to EDA recording equipment made EDA measurement more frequent in studies of consumer emotions. Additionally, recent calls to include physiological data in consumer studies have been voiced, which in turn is increasing the interest in EDA. Such a growing interest calls for assessing why and how EDA measurement has been used and should be used in consumer research. To this end, we undertook a critical review of studies of consumer emotions that employed EDA measurement. We found that most of these studies did not sufficiently report how they recorded and analyzed EDA data, which in turn impeded the replication of the findings. We therefore make recommendations derived from the psychophysiology literature to help consumer researchers get meaningful insights from EDA measurements. Finally, we call on researchers to be more transparent when reporting how they recorded and analyzed EDA data. Keywords: electrodermal activity, customer experience, emotion, physiological measurement, arousal The Use of Electrodermal Activity (EDA) Measurement to Understand Consumer Emotions – A literature review and a call for action Introduction We live in an experience-based economy and creating a strong customer experience is the main goal for many organizations (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). It has been argued that customers value experiences over products and services (Abbott, 1955; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). Consequently, instead of organizations competing on price, competing on customer experiences is an alternative route to take. Experiences prevail in customers’ evaluations of brands because a brand can be defined as “a cluster of functional and emotional values that promises a unique and welcomed experience” (De Chernatony, 2010, p. 12). These emotional values are heavily influenced by smells, sounds, sights, tastes, and textures in any context. The question then is, how do organizations capture customer experiences and, in particular, their emotional component? The answer is usually by self-reports, such as questionnaires and other forms of verbal descriptions. Self-reports, however, capture only one part of an emotional experience, which can be classified as the subjective part (Mauss & Robinson, 2009). An emotional experience does not simply consist of the description one can make of this experience. Apart from the subjective part, the experience also consists of a behavioral response (e.g., smiling) and of physiological changes (Bradley & Lang, 1999; Gross, 1998; Kring & Gordon, 1998; Lang, 1993; Mauss & Robinson, 2009). Physiological changes are indeed what differentiates affect from cognition (Lazarus, 1991). Emotions are first physiologically experienced (e.g., heart rate acceleration, sweat secretion); only as the mind perceives these physiological changes does the individual become aware of his/her emotion (Damasio, 2000). A consumer may never mentally be aware of the physiologically change. Technological and neuroscientif

FAQs

Why is electrodermal activity (EDA) used to understand consumer emotions?

EDA is a psychophysiological indicator of emotional arousal, enabling researchers to measure emotion as it manifests in bodily reactions without requiring verbalization.

What problem did the literature review identify in existing EDA consumer-emotion studies?

Most studies did not sufficiently report how EDA data were recorded and analyzed, which hindered replication of findings.

What recommendations and call for action does the article propose?

The article offers recommendations drawn from psychophysiology literature to help consumer researchers obtain meaningful insights and urges researchers to report transparently how they recorded and analyzed EDA data.

Sep 2, 2026

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