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Currently, the Covid-19 pandemic is changing how consumers shop, encouraging deeper levels and increased reliance on e-commerce systems and social media such as online communities. The online interaction of consumers is more important and brings many uncertainties, which impact the original commerce environment. This study aim to investigate the ethical consideration of information credibility and perceived privacy risk from a psychology perspective in marketing, this study draws on social support theory from social psychology to develop a research model to investigate the role of information credibility and perceived privacy risk on social commerce websites.

This study investigated social commerce websites and communities. The research data of this study was collected through a questionnaire from consumers on three famous social commerce platforms. Using PLS-SEM to perform data analysis, this study research the importance of information credibility, perceived privacy risk and trust on social commerce websites.

The findings discuss individuals' reaction to privacy issues and to understand the motives to disclose or reveal personal information within a marketing or consumption context. The research also explores the theoretical implications by integrating theories from information systems and social psychology to investigate ethical issues in social commerce.

Covid-19 makes peer-to-peer communication in online communities is developing collaborative consumption, and information produced in these communities can influence the decisions of consumers. Covid-19 has exacerbated such a change in social commerce environment. Therefore, information credibility plays an important role in developing online communities. It is important to look at the psychological antecedents that drive consumers' willingness to share their personal information when using online communities. The author has clarified which aspects of trust in social commerce should be strategized, including information trustworthiness, perceived privacy risks, social support and information sharing. These are the details that companies should pay more attention to when operating social commerce. Only by paying more attention to these details and giving consumers a positive feeling can consumers' trust be maintained or enhanced, ultimately leading to a successful trust economy.

With the ever-expanding online shopping, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has become a significant factor affecting the consumer decision-making behaviour. This is specially the case when considering Generation Y (Millennials), who are old enough to be independent buyers and young to be almost immersed in online living. This article aims to assess the impact of eWOM on purchase intention by developing a conceptual model of hypotheses encompassing a multitude of factors that may be associated with this relationship.

The researcher investigates what factors impact eWOM credibility and make the consumer may adopt it when making a purchase. To examine our research model, a quantitative approach is employed for this purpose using a sample through online survey from Thailand – where there is a large number portion Generation Y consumer base.

It was found that source style as a visual attribute information is the most significant factor that may impact eWOM credibility in addition to source credibility, argument quality and source homophily, respectively.

From a practical point of view, it helps firms to understand what needs to be taken into consideration when building their marketing strategy.

This is believed to add significant insights into the eWOM literature by identifying its route of impact toward the purchase intention on Generation Y.

Purpose: Many Internet users search for health information but they struggle with assessing the quality of the information they find. By drawing on a multi-modal approach to data collection, this study aims to understand further the nuanced cognitive processes that people utilize as they acquire and evaluate online health information.

Design: We used a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys, interviews, and observations of 76 diverse adults of all ages in the Chicago area completing various health information-seeking tasks.

Findings: Most participants begin their information-seeking process on search engines. We identified the most popular credibility-assessment strategies used on the search engine results’ pages (SERP) as well as on websites. We also explored how the process of executing such strategies reveals greater and lesser savvy among users.

Research Limitations: While the sample size and methods limit its generalizability, this study included a larger and more diverse group of participants than most observational work, which results in data about a wider range of behaviors than is typical of such research.

Social Implications: Our findings showed that most of our participants could use additional education regarding credibility assessment of online health information. Additionally, since a great deal of credibility assessment occurs on SERP, search companies bear a particular responsibility for ensuring the quality of the information their results highlight.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of one particular online discussion forum as a potentially authoritative health information source for its users. The concept of cognitive authority is used as a starting point for understanding information evaluation in this context. The focus is placed on the types of information users seek for from this forum, the ways they assess the credibility of information obtained, and their views on the impact of this information.

The empirical data were collected with a questionnaire survey from the users of a Finnish online forum for girls and young women (n=290). The data were analyzed qualitatively with content analytic techniques and quantitatively by using descriptive analysis.

The forum was found to offer girls and young women the possibility to receive health information from peers. It was viewed as an appropriate source for experiential rather than factual health information and used to find information on sexuality, bodily functions and diets, for example. Author-related cues, argumentation and tone, veracity and verification were recognized as means to evaluate information credibility. Credibility evaluation was found to be linked with conceptions of the forum and the type of information sought. A share of the respondents recognized the information obtained to have influence on their thinking or behavior.

Based on the findings, it can be argued that the members of the online forum – individually or collectively – can act as cognitive authorities for other users. The findings cannot be generalized beyond this online forum, to Finnish girls or young women, or even the users of the online forum. However, they provide insights into the ways young people evaluate user-generated information in a particular online setting and domain of knowledge and as such contribute to research on cognitive authority, credibility evaluation and information literacy.

The goal of this study is to investigate the relationships among brand attachment, online source credibility, and severity of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

A 2×2×2 experiment was conducted to explore the effects of brand attachment (low or high), online source credibility (low or high), and online information severity (low or high) on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

The results showed that the severity of negative online information affects perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk significantly. However brand attachment can reduce the effects of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk significantly. The results also showed that the effect of the severity of negative online information on perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk is moderated by online source credibility.

In addition to the main effects in the proposed research model, it is the first study to explore the moderating effects of brand attachment and online source credibility on the relationship between negative online information and perceived negative change in brand evaluation and perceived brand risk.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on disadvantaged tweens’ (ages 11 through 13) strategies for making predictive and evaluative judgments of the credibility of health information online. More specifically, this paper identifies the features of Google search results pages and web sites that signal credibility (or lack thereof) to this population and the reasons behind their perceptions.

The authors employed an ethnographic approach (using various types of data collection methods) targeted to generate in-depth descriptions of tweens making predictive and evaluative judgments of credibility, focussing on the ways in which these tweens naturally assess the credibility of online information.

The research has yielded novel findings concerning the types of factors that influence disadvantaged tweens’ credibility assessment strategies, such as limited English-language vocabularies, lack of familiarity with perhaps otherwise well-known sources, and forced reliance on (and/or general preference for) non-textual modalities, such as audio and video.

The findings indicate a need for implementing digital literacy programs in a naturalized setting, building on tweens’ existing heuristics and thereby resulting in strategies that are simultaneously compatible with their natural inclinations within the online environment and likely to consistently lead them to accurate credibility-related judgments.

This study provides novel insights into how disadvantaged tweens interact with online health information in a natural context, and offers invaluable information regarding the ways in which credibility assessment processes should be facilitated within formal or informal digital literacy programs.

Specifically focusing on one antecedent (information seeker's characteristics) for electronic word‐of‐mouth adoption and credibility assessments, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to shed light on consumer motivations for making and taking online recommendations, and how technically savvy consumers assess credibility online.

To investigate the role and influence of word‐of‐mouth (WOM) amongst technically savvy online consumers, purposeful sampling was used to limit participants to those who have made online purchases and who spend more than three hours a day on the internet. Using an adaptation of the grounded theory method, this study was triangulated via one face‐to‐face interview with each participant, member‐checking, analysis of online communications deemed “not credible” by the participants, and through relevant literature from marketing and information systems (IS).

Analysis shows that participants exhibit more of a “bricks‐to‐clicks” than a “clicks‐to‐bricks” purchasing cycle. In addition to relying on customer reviews online, participants accept online WOM to enhance their self‐worth, avoid risk, or enact negativity bias. Additionally, assessment of online WOM credibility is based on four factors: the polarity and quantity of posts, the logic and articulation of posts, the ability to find corroborating sources, and the previous experience of participants with particular sellers.

Previous research in WOM has not specifically explored how technically savvy consumers assess the credibility of online information and how these consumers may help to identify future trends for online customer exchanges. This qualitative study fills this gap. Conceptual framework and managerial implications are discussed.

This study aims to address the growing importance of online health information (OHI) and the associated uncertainty. Although previous research has explored factors influencing the credibility of OHI, results have been inconsistent. Therefore, this study aims to identify the essential factors that influence the perceived credibility of OHI by conducting a meta-analysis of articles published from 2010 to 2022. The study also aims to examine the moderating effects of demographic characteristics, study design and the platforms where health information is located.

Based on the Prominence-Interpretation Theory (PIT), a meta-analysis of 25 empirical studies was conducted to explore 12 factors related to information content and source, social interaction, individual and media affordance. Moderators such as age, education level, gender of participants, sample size, platforms and research design were also examined.

Results suggest that all factors, except social support, have significant effects on the credibility of OHI. Among them, argument quality had the strongest correlation with credibility and individual factors were also found to be relevant. Moderating effects indicate that social support was significantly moderated by age and education level. Different sample sizes may lead to variations in the role of social endorsement, while personal involvement was moderated by sample size, platform and study design.

This study enriches the application of PIT in the health domain and provides guidance for scholars to expand the scope of research on factors influencing OHI credibility.

The aim of this paper is to investigate predictors of online medical research by nurses.

A cross‐sectional study was conducted and a representative sample of nurses was selected from three Taiwanese hospitals from 1 January to 31 March 2007. A total of 274 female nurses completed the questionnaire.

The results indicate that the expectancy value of internet characteristics, attitude towards online information seeking and perceived credibility of online information significantly and positively predict online information‐seeking behaviour in nurses. Specifically, the multiple hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the perceived credibility of online information is the strongest predictive variable of online information seeking.

The findings of this study suggest that an important task for professional health organisations is to educate nurses in assessing the reliability of medical information found on the web, such as looking for credible institutional sites, verifying available information with that from other sources or sites, and using common sense.

This article aims to elaborate the context-sensitive nature of credibility assessment by examining how such judgments are made in online discussion in times of uncertainty caused by Finland's intent to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in spring 2022.

The empirical findings draw on the qualitative content analysis of 3,324 posts submitted to a Finnish online discussion in February–March 2022. It was examined how the participants of online discussion assess the credibility of information sources referred to in debates on the NATO membership. It is assumed that the believability of the author of information is indicative of his or her expert power, for example based on the credentials of a scholar, while the credibility of information content, for example the provision of factual evidence is indicative of the source's informational power.

Political decision-makers, particularly the President of Finland were assessed as most credible information sources, due to their access to confidential knowledge and long-time experience in politics. The credibility assessments differed more strongly while judging the believability of researchers. On the one hand, their expertise was praised; on the other hand, doubts were presented about their partiality. Fellow participants of online discussion were assessed most negatively because information sources of these types are associated with low expert and informational power.

As the study concentrated on credibility assessments made in a Finnish online discussion group, the findings cannot be extended to concern the credibility judgments occurring information in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterize the role of expert and informational power in credibility assessment in times of uncertainty.