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Controversial information systems (IS) represent a unique context in which certain members of a user's social circle may endorse the use of a system while others object to it. The purpose of this paper is to explore the simultaneous and often conflicting roles of such positive and negative social influences through social learning and ambivalence theories in shaping user adoption intention of a representative case of controversial IS, namely online dating services (ODS).

The model was tested with two empirical studies using structural equation modeling techniques. The data of these studies were collected from 451 (Study 1) and 510 (Study 2) single individuals (i.e. not in a relationship).

(1) Positive social influence has a stronger impact on perceived benefits and adoption intention, while negative social influence exerts a greater impact on perceived risks; (2) positive and negative social influences affect adoption intention toward ODS differently, through benefit and risk assessments; and (3) ambivalence significantly negatively moderates the effects of social influences on adoption.

This study enriches and extends the IS use, ambivalence theory, prospect theory, and social learning theory research streams. Furthermore, this study suggests that it is necessary to focus on not only the oft-considered positive but also negative social influences in IS research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of identity-based consumer perceptions on the brand avoidance of foreign brands across multiple markets.

Focussing on general product category brands, the study was conducted across two countries, i.e. New Zealand (Study 1) and Pakistan (Study 2), using online surveys. Study 1 explores the perceptions of university students, whereas Study 2 evaluates the perceptions of a more heterogeneous population across the country. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was used to analyse the model.

First, the results confirm that individual-level identity-based drivers (undesired self-congruence and negative social influence) consistently predict brand avoidance for foreign brands across both markets, whereas country-level drivers (consumer ethnocentrism and animosity) have inconsistent effects across the markets. Second, the study demonstrates that avoidance attitude fully mediates the relationship between antecedences and intentions to avoid foreign brands.

The finding that undesired self-congruence is the strongest predictor of brand avoidance across the markets reinforces the importance of brand image congruence with the target audience. Considering the negative effect of social influence, especially on social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter), this finding cautions managers to constantly monitor the prevailing negative word of mouth (online or offline) about the brand to mitigate its potential effect.

Drawing on social identity theory, this study explores the identity-based pre-purchase determinants of brand avoidance at the country level and at the individual level. These determinants have never been explored yet in the context of brand avoidance.

Widespread concerns about excessive use of mobile instant messaging (MIM) have inspired research in different disciplines. However, the focus thus far tends to be on diagnostics and cognitive predictors. There is little understanding from the socio-technical perspective to capture the drivers of excessive use of MIM. To address this research gap, the authors aim to enrich existing literature by adopting a social structure and social learning model (SSSLM) to understand the excessive use of MIM. The authors argue that excessive MIM use is developed and reinforced in highly interactive online communication, through a social learning process.

The authors conduct a cross-sectional online survey to validate our proposed research model on excessive use of mobile instant messaging (MIM). 368 valid responses are obtained from active MIM users in China.

The results suggest that highly interactive MIM creates a technology-based social structure that facilitates the social learning process of excessive technology use. The influence of perceived interactivity of MIM on excessive MIM use is mediated by a series of contextualized social learning factors. Furthermore, the influences of perceived interactivity on social learning factors are moderated by MIM use experience.

The authors contribute to literature in related fields by highlighting the crucial role of social learning in facilitating excessive technology use. The authors contribute to the social structure and social learning model by contextualizing it into the context of excessive MIM use. Design guidelines are provided with a purpose to inhibit excessive use of MIM.

The purpose of this paper develops a conceptual model of social influence for Internet banking adoption (IBA) using social networking platforms (SNPs). It identifies the antecedents of social influence that can positively and negative influence the IBA among a targeted population of conventional and Islamic banks. Moreover, this paper contributes various factors to social influence theory with the purpose of enhancing its implication in the context of Internet banking uptake in developed and developing countries.

This study uses a social constructivism approach to understand customer experiences, thoughts, knowledge, awareness and perceptions in relation to IBA. For this study, data were collected from 30 respondents using semi-structured interviews and purposive sampling.

Social influence comprises customer recommendations, suggestions, ratings, reviews, experiences and thoughts regarding the IBA of Islamic and conventional banks. The findings reveal that social reviews, social experts, social consensus, social responsibility and social perceptions are the key antecedents of social influence that can enhance IBA of SNPs. The research finds that positive social reviews, expert support, consensus, social responsibility and social perceptions are significant in relation to conventional Internet banking. The respondents revealed serious concerns about the privacy of their personal and financial information especially in relation to Islamic banks.

The effective and well-organized use of SNPs can foster service reviews, word of mouth, higher levels of service awareness, interactive communication, social consensus and social trust to drive the adoption of Internet banking. This study proposes the conceptual model which has positive business implications and provides the banks direction to use the SNPs to their advantage to influxes their customers to adopt the use of Internet banking.

Most previous studies have used technology acceptance model, theory of planned behavior and unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology theories in the adoption of technology and IBA. These theories have not fully illuminated the role of social content as a way to enhance or decrease the number of customers in conventional and Islamic banks. This study develops social influence theory by exploring several dimensions (i.e. social reviews, awareness, consensus, cooperation and experts support) in the context of IBA for users of SNPs. Social influence can create more reviews and can lead to more prepurchase information. It can drive customer inquiries and engagement and can inform purchase decisions for IBA. On the other hand, it can motivate existing customers of Islamic banks to use conventional banking services due to effective word of mouth.

We investigate the joint impacts of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of reviews and attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

We performed three studies to test our research model, presenting participants with scenarios involving product reviews and prior users' helpful and unhelpful votes across experimental settings.

A high helpfulness ratio boosts users’ trust and influences behaviors in both positive and negative reviews. This effect is more pronounced in attribute-based reviews than emotion-based ones. Unlike the ratio effect, helpfulness magnitude significantly impacts only negative attribute-based reviews.

Future research should investigate voting systems in various online contexts, such as Facebook post likes, Twitter microblog thumb-ups and up-votes for article comments on platforms like The New York Times.

Our findings have significant implications for voting system-providers implementing information techniques on third-party review platforms, participatory sites emphasizing user-generated content and online retailers prioritizing product awareness and reputation.

This study addresses an identified need; that is, the helpfulness votes as an additional trust cue and the joint effects of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of customers in reviews and their consequential attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

Online reviews are often likely to be socially influenced by prior reviews. This study aims to examine key review and reviewer characteristics which may influence the social influence process.

Restaurant review data from Yelp.com are analyzed using an ordered logit model and text mining approach.

This study reveals that prior average review rating exerts a positive influence on subsequent review ratings for the same restaurant, but the effect is attenuated by the variance in existing review ratings. Moreover, social influence is stronger for consumers who had a moderate dining experience or invested less cognitive effort in writing online reviews. Compared to reviewers classified by Yelp as “elite,” non-elite reviewers appear more susceptible to the social influence of prior average review rating.

This study provides guidelines for mitigating the social influence of prior reviews and improving the accuracy of online product/service ratings, which will eventually enhance business and the reputation of online review platforms.

The findings from this study contribute to the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) literature and social influence literature in terms of the bidirectional nature of social influence on eWOM.

This paper aims to undertake an empirical investigation on firm characteristics determining corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and its subcategories such as environmental, social and governance disclosures.

The sample consisted of listed companies in BSE 500 index for a period of 10 years from 2007 to 2016. Panel data regression method is used for the analysis. Seven variables are analyzed, namely, firm age, financial leverage, firm size, foreign ownership, promoter ownership, export performance, innovation and firm popularity.

The result shows that firm age and financial leverage are positively influencing CSR, environmental and social disclosure score but both are negatively influencing governance score. Firm size is positively associated with all four disclosure scores. Among ownership variables, foreign ownership shows a positive influence and promoters ownership shows a negative influence towards CSR, environment and social disclosures. No association is found between both ownership variables and governance disclosure score. Further analysis also finds that there is a difference in this relationship during crisis period.

The study focuses only on listed companies in Indian capital market. In terms of implication, theoretical bases discussed in the literature review and hypotheses development are mostly validated.

The findings are important for the firm, stakeholders and policymakers. A firm may think about appointing experts in CSR to spend the amount wisely and improve CSR disclosure to compete in the international market; stakeholders have to pressure the firm to provide more CSR disclosure and for policymakers this study study provides useful inputs to design legal framework on CSR.

The measurement of CSR disclosure using environmental, social and governance (ESG) score is novel in Indian context, even though the methodology is often used in literature.

The triple bottom line of sustainability performance is well known; however, little research links it to consumer brand perceptions and intentions. This is important because consumers believe that brands should develop sustainability strategies and conduct business in ways that support those strategies. Using the theoretical lenses of signaling theory and spillover effects, this study aims to examine the impact of negative messages about brands’ triple bottom line sustainability activities on consumer perceived brand ethicality, perceived product quality and purchase interest.

This research includes two lab experiments with the US participants.

When brands have sustainability failures, consumers feel the firm is less ethical, its products are lower in quality and purchase interest suffers – regardless how the failure relates to the triple bottom line (environmental, social or economic). These effects are moderated by brand familiarity and the message source. Brand familiarity seems to protect a firm’s ethicality image as does when the information comes from a corporate source, contrary to the prevalent literature.

Unlike most sustainability research, this study provides comparison effects across all three dimensions of the triple bottom line. In doing so, this study highlights nuances in how consumers connect brands’ sustainability-related activities with perceptions about ethics and brand expectations. This research also contextualizes the findings through brand familiarity and message source and contributes to the growing body of literature on sustainability branding.

This study aims to show the impact of direct and indirect customers’ negatively valenced influencing behavior (NVIB) on other actors in online social networks.

Four experiments were conducted in an online review setting that encompasses both restaurant and hotel reviews. The first study compares the impact of direct and indirect NVIB. The second, third and fourth studies measure this impact moderated by aggregate ratings, the volume of positive reviews and managerial responses.

Drawing on recent literature of customer engagement behavior, online reviews and social influence theory, this paper provides the first empirical results of the impact of direct and indirect NVIB, revealing the significant difference in their impact and the moderating role of the aggregate ratings, number of positive reviews and managerial responses on the cause-effect relationship between direct and indirect NVIB and other actors’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward service providers.

TripAdvisor reviews were selected for the reason of appropriateness rather than representativeness, using two service providers, hotels and restaurants.

This paper provides managers with new insights, which capture not only what customers say about service providers but also the impact of how they say it, suggesting that managers move beyond framing NVIB in generalized terms to considering the differences in the impact of its direct and indirect facets.

This paper is the first to provide empirical results about the significant difference in the impact of direct and indirect NVIB on other actors’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward service providers, moderated by different heuristics, namely, ratings, volume of positive reviews and managerial responses.

Online gaming is a global phenomenon that can lead to behavioural addiction and affect players’ mental and physical health. This paper aims to integrate the concepts of help-seeking and stages of change to investigate triggers for problem recognition for problematic online gaming that lead to help-seeking behaviour.

Critical Incident Technique method was used to collect a total of 78 critical incidents from a sample of 12 male online gamers who self-identified as having experienced problematic online gaming behaviour.

Six classifications of problem recognition triggers for young male problematic online gamers were identified: self-realisation, negative consequences, negative emotions, social influence, competing priorities and impact on social skills. Results indicate that both positive and negative triggers are important for problem recognition.

Valuable contributions were made to the social marketing literature by presenting an integrated model of help-seeking and stages of change theories, providing new insights into SOC and expanding the understanding of the processes involved in the transition between pre-contemplation and contemplation.