Pascal Heßler

Dr. Pascal Heßler

  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

    Institute for Information Systems (WIN)

    Kaiserstraße 93

    76133 Karlsruhe

Dr. Pascal Heßler is a postdoctoral researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of technology (KIT), Germany. He is part of the Information Systems III research group, headed by Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer.

He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in economics at the Justus-Liebig-University (JLU). In his doctorate, he focused on the field of information systems and successfully defended his thesis in March 2025 (Dr. rer. pol.). After his PhD Pascal Heßler switched the universities and is now at KIT.

Pascal Heßler contributed to multiple conferences and journals as reviewer: HAI, ECIS, ICIS, WI, Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) and Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS).

Research Interests

In my research I want to better understand the interaction between Conversational Agents (CAs) like a chatbot with humans. More specific how different design (e.g.: human-like vs computer-like) influences the users decision making regarding spending to a charity. To better understand the interplay between humans and computer I conduct experiments.

My main topics of interest are:

  • Conversational Agents and anthropomorphization
  • Designing and conducting experiments
  • Analyzing data and statistics (quantitative)
  • Algorithm aversion
  • Programming

Short CV

04/2025 - today

PostDoc @ KIT

07/2020 - 03/2025

PhD Student (JLU Gießen)

Topic: "From Aversion to Adoption: Exploring the Influence of Conversational Agents on Users"

10/2016 - 03/2020

M.Sc.: Business Administrations (JLU Gießen)

Thesis: "Empirical Models of Prices on Airbnb: Comparing Econometric and Machine Learning Approaches"

10/2013 - 09/2016

B.Sc.: Business Administrations and Economics (JLU Gießen)

Thesis: "Monte-Carlo-Simulation in Controlling"

Teaching

Teaching before KIT:
  • Lecture / Exercise: Data Science with Python for Business and Economics (JLU)
  • Lecture / Exercise: Operations Management (JLU)
  • Exercise: E-Commerce (JLU)
  • Exercise: Design und Analyse von Experimenten in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften (JLU)
  • ... and many supervisions of seminar and thesis projects :)
Teaching at KIT:
Semester Degree Level Title Format Lecturer(s)
SS 2025 Bachelor Teamprojekt Wirtschaft und Technologie Project

Supervisors of this research group:

Dr. Pascal Heßler

Luca Lorenzo Bennardo

SS 2025 Bachelor Wirtschaftsinformatik II Lecture & Tutorium

Prof. Dr. Christoph Weinhardt (Lecture)

Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer (Lecture)

Dr. Pascal Heßler (Supervision Tutorium)

SS 2025 Master Data Science for Business (formerly "Business Data Analytics and Tools") Lecture & Exercise

Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer (Lecture)

Julia Gutschow (Exercise)

Dr. Pascal Heßler (Case Study)

Open Thesis Topics
Format Degree Level Open Topics Supervisor(s)
Thesis Master Limitations and Biases of Large Language Models: Identifying, Measuring, and Counteracting Gender Stereotypes and Fairness Issues

Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer

Dr. Pascal Heßler

Thesis Master Manipulating Warmth and Competence in Conversational Agents Through the Use of Stereotypes Based on the Stereotype Content Model

Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer

Dr. Pascal Heßler

Publications


When Self-Humanization Leads to Algorithm Aversion – What Users Want from Decision Support Systems on Prosocial Microlending Platforms
Heßler, P. O.; Pfeiffer, J.; Hafenbrädl, S.
2022. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 64 (3), 275–292. doi:10.1007/s12599-022-00754-y
Conversational Agents with Voice: How Social Presence Influences the User Behavior in Microlending Decisions
Unfried, M.; Pfeiffer, J.; Heßler, P.
2023. Proceedings of the 31st European Conference in Information Systems (ECIS), Kristiansand, N, June 11-16, 2023