Abstract: ［Purpose/Significance］Exploring characteristics and influence factors of users’ negative emotions in collaborative searching could provide some reference for its intervention and adjustment to achieve better collaborative searching results. ［Design/Methodology］Fiftytwo participants are recruited and grouped in pairs. They were asked to finish three travel planning tasks. Relationships of users’ negative emotions and influence factors including task difficulty, time pressure, task collaboration and division, searching results and collaborating outcomes are explored based on the affective load theory by applying the Coagmento system. ［Findings/Conclusion］In terms of the cognation of the task difficulty, the difficulty positively correlates with the negative emotions, including anxiety, frustration and rage. In terms of the time pressure, users suffer more negative emotions when tasks consume longer time than expected. The participants who do more searching work suffer more negative emotions than those conducting more editing work. Besides, satisfaction with searching results and collaboration outcomes both contribute to reducing negative emotions perception. ［Originality/Value］By using the affective load theory in collaborative search, characteristics of four typical negative emotions are revealed. Suggestions for improving the searching system are proposed from the perspectives of automatic perception and prediction, humanistic interface design and so on, which could be benefical to provide emotional supports.

Key words: Collaborative search, Negative emotion, Affective load, Task difficulty, Time pressure