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What Matters in Social Accounts? The Roles of Account Specificity, Source Expertise, and Outcome Loss on Acceptance
Author(s) -
Frey Francis M.,
Cobb Anthony T.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00616.x
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , trainer , outcome (game theory) , affect (linguistics) , microeconomics , economics , communication , computer science , programming language
Although we know that social accounts favorably affect fairness outcomes, we still do not know what makes them work. An experimental design was used to assess the impact of message specificity, source expertise, and outcome loss on account acceptance. Also examined was how account acceptance mediates the relationship between these factors and a range of fairness outcomes. Specificity had a main effect on acceptability, but interacted with expertise across levels of loss. Expertise had a slight positive effect on acceptance under low loss conditions, but its effect turned sharply negative under conditions of higher loss. Acceptability partially mediated the relationship between specificity and all fairness outcomes, and fully mediated the impact on commitment to the trainer.