TY - JOUR
T1 - Curbing Negativity
T2 - Influence of Providing Justifications About Control Over User-Generated Comments on Social Media
AU - Shin, Soo Yun
AU - Dai, Yue(Nancy)
AU - Beyea, David
AU - Prchal, Benjamin
AU - Makki, Taj W.
AU - Schlafhauser, Katherine
AU - Van Der Heide, Brandon
PY - 2020/8/1
Y1 - 2020/8/1
N2 - Social media present prime opportunities for commercial brands to promote their products. Some user-generated comments, however, hamper brands’ promotion efforts with fake claims. The literature on warranting theory suggests that if a company controls the dissemination of user-generated comments of its products, it may backfire against the company by reducing the warranting value of favorable comments. The current study proposes that a company’s justification for their information control behavior can restore the warranting value of user-generated comments. Drawing upon the literature on fairness theory and mindlessness, the study investigated the effectiveness of two types of justifications varying in their legitimacy. Results from a web-based experiment (N = 221) with four conditions (no evidence of dissemination control vs. no justification vs. placebic justification vs. real justification) confirm that when a company offers a legitimate justification for deleting users’ comments, it mitigates negative evaluations that may result from the company’s information control behavior.
AB - Social media present prime opportunities for commercial brands to promote their products. Some user-generated comments, however, hamper brands’ promotion efforts with fake claims. The literature on warranting theory suggests that if a company controls the dissemination of user-generated comments of its products, it may backfire against the company by reducing the warranting value of favorable comments. The current study proposes that a company’s justification for their information control behavior can restore the warranting value of user-generated comments. Drawing upon the literature on fairness theory and mindlessness, the study investigated the effectiveness of two types of justifications varying in their legitimacy. Results from a web-based experiment (N = 221) with four conditions (no evidence of dissemination control vs. no justification vs. placebic justification vs. real justification) confirm that when a company offers a legitimate justification for deleting users’ comments, it mitigates negative evaluations that may result from the company’s information control behavior.
KW - e-commerce
KW - justification
KW - online reviews
KW - social media
KW - warranting theory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053347609&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85053347609&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1177/0093650218794853
DO - 10.1177/0093650218794853
M3 - RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal
SN - 0093-6502
VL - 47
SP - 838
EP - 859
JO - Communication Research
JF - Communication Research
IS - 6
ER -