Trust Me on This: A User Study of Trustworthiness for RAG Responses

Abstract: The integration of generative AI into information access systems often presents users with synthesized answers that lack transparency. This study investigates how different types of explanations can influence user trust in responses from retrieval-augmented generation systems. We conducted a controlled, two-stage user study where participants chose the more trustworthy response from a pair-one objectively higher quality than the other-both with and without one of three explanation types: (1) source attribution, (2) factual grounding, and (3) information coverage. Our results show that while explanations significantly guide users toward selecting higher quality responses, trust is not dictated by objective quality alone: Users' judgments are also heavily influenced by response clarity, actionability, and their own prior knowledge.