Impact of informational factors on online recommendation credibility: The moderating role of source credibility

a r t i c l e i n f o This study investigates the moderating effect of recommendation source credibility on the causal relationships between informational factors and recommendation credibility, as well as its moderating effect on the causal relationship between recommendation credibility and recommendation adoption. Using data from 199 responses from a leading online consumer discussion forum in China, we find that recommendation source credibility significantly moderates two informational factors' effects on readers' perception of recommendation credibility, each in a different direction. Further, we find that source credibility negatively moderates the effect of recommendation credibility on recommendation adoption. Traditional word-of-mouth (WOM) has been shown to play an important role on consumers' purchase decisions (e.g., [2]). With the popularization of the Internet, more and more consumers have shared their past consuming experiences (i.e., online consumer recommendation) online, and researchers often refer to this online WOM as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Given the distinct characteristics of Internet communication (e.g., available to individuals without the limitation of time and location, directed to multiple individuals simultaneously), eWOM has conquered known limitations of traditional WOM. In general, eWOM has global reach and influence. In China, many online consumer discussion forums support eWOM, and much previous research [3,7,12,13,21] demonstrates that because eWOM provides indirect purchasing knowledge to readers, the recommendations on these forums can significantly affect their attitudes towards various kinds of consuming targets (e.g., stores, products and services). Various prior studies have postulated large numbers of antecedent factors which can affect information readers' cognition towards the recommendations, and many of them stem from elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (e. that there are two distinct routes that can affect information readers' attitude toward presented information: (1) the central route that considers the attitude formation (or change) as the result of the receivers' diligent consideration of the content of the information (informational factors); and (2) the peripheral route that requires less cognitive work attuned to simple cues in the information to influence attitude (information-irrelevant factors). ELM suggests two factors, named information readers' motivation and ability, can be the significant moderators to shift the effects of central and peripheral factors on readers' perception of information credibility. Other researchers [24,27] posit that the peripheral factor – source credibility – may also have a moderating rather than a direct effect on the causal relationship between the informational factors and the information credibility; this view is consistent with the attribution inference …