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Herd behavior in consumers’ adoption of online reviews
Author(s) -
Shen XiaoLiang,
Zhang Kem Z.K.,
Zhao Sesia J.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.23602
Subject(s) - homophily , credibility , herd behavior , affect (linguistics) , source credibility , discounting , marketing , information quality , quality (philosophy) , perspective (graphical) , psychology , computer science , business , social psychology , information system , political science , forestry , geography , herding , philosophy , communication , finance , epistemology , artificial intelligence , law
It has been demonstrated that online consumer reviews are an important source of information that affect individuals’ purchase decision making. To understand the influence of online reviews, this study extends prior research on information adoption by incorporating the perspective of herd behavior. We develop and empirically test a research model using data collected from an existing book review site. We report 2 major findings. First, argument quality and source credibility predict information usefulness, which affects the adoption of online reviews. Second, we determine that the adoption of online reviews is also influenced by 2 herd factors, namely, discounting own information and imitating others. We further identify the key determinants of these herd factors, including background homophily and attitude homophily. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.