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The present study aims to demonstrate that the volunteering licenses people to indulge in luxury purchase, and both heightened moral self-evaluation and reduced guilt mediate the effect of licensing on ratings of a luxury item by implementing three experimental studies. This study explained the moral licensing behavior using a passive goal guidance model: i.e., people license themselves to indulge when people perceive progress on one of their long-term goals.

In this paper, three experiments were used to test hypotheses.

The present paper is new in terms of three aspects. First, moral self-evaluation as a mediator is tested using a more stringent method in comparison to prior studies. Second, reduced guilt which had not yet been explicitly tested is established as a mediator. Third, the present study demonstrates that the passive goal guidance model as a valid theory in explaining the licensing behavior by showing that when people perceive progress in a long-term goal by helping others in need, they are more likely to engage in dysfunctional luxury brand purchases. Previous studies have used credentialing theory to explain this.

The present study established and confirmed that reduced guilt is a mediator in the licensing effect on the purchase of luxury items.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to test whether the combined effects of valence and objectivity/subjectivity of online review have an effect on consumer judgment and whether e-WOM platforms have a moderating effect.

In total, 480 respondents participated in online experiments with a four (positive+objective, positive+subjective, negative+objective, and negative+subjective online review) by two (marketer-generated vs consumer-generated brand community web sites) between subject design.

The experiment showed that: an objective negative online review was rated higher in terms of message usefulness compared to the other types of online reviews; positive reviews, whether they are objective or subjective, were rated higher in terms of attitudes toward and intention to purchase the reviewed product, and the effects of online reviews moderated by e-WOM platforms on consumer judgment were supported.

The present study, based on an established theoretical foundation, will help the research community to gain a deeper understanding of the combined effects of online review valence and attributes on consumer judgment and whether user-generated web community is better for consumers to consult product experience.

The findings of this study can provide interested firms with useful strategies and tactics to enhance users’ acceptance of online reviews in terms of who operates the web sites.

With increasing use of consumers’ online reviews, the present study proposed and tested a comprehensive research model integrating both the valence and objectivity/subjectivity of online review, which has rarely been addressed in previous research.