Effects of information quality and source credibility on EWOM adoption in context of virtual community

This paper analyzes the eWOM information adoption behavior from the perspective of consumers, aiming to reveal consumers' choosing, absorbing and internalization of WOM information psychological process.

Abstract

In recent years, with the network economy development and web 3.0 technology innovation, consumers not only express their views about products freely, but also communicate and interact with each other on virtual sharing platform, which makes dissemination of eWOM more extensive and influential. This paper analyzes the eWOM information adoption behavior from the perspective of consumers, aiming to reveal consumers' choosing, absorbing and internalization of WOM information psychological process. And in the context of virtual community, this paper explores information quality, source credibility two antecedents of information adoption, and reconstructs their new dimensions through qualitative research. EWOM information quality is composed of vividness, appropriate amount, reliability, relevance, guidance and interactivity. Source credibility is composed of trustworthiness, popularity and community status. At last this paper tests the hypotheses that information quality and source credibility are positive to information adoption using a scenario simulation experiment method.