Revisit the information adoption model by exploring the moderating role of tie strength: A perspective from construal level theory

Previous studies on review information adoption, drawing upon dual process theory, focus on the important roles of two key review-related factors namely argument strength and source credibility, but pay less attention to the social relationships between review sources and recipients. To fill this research gap, based on the construal level theory, we articulate that tie strength moderates the impacts of argument strength and source credibility on content diagnosticity. A survey was conducted to examine the proposed research model and hypotheses and the results showed that the relationship between argument strength and content diagnosticity is stronger when tie strength is weak than when tie strength is strong while the relationship between source credibility is stronger when tie strength is strong than when tie strength is weak. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.