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Young people who are looked after by the state face challenges as they make the transition from care to adulthood, with variation in support available. In the past decade, funding has been directed towards organisations to pilot innovations to support transition, with accompanying evaluations often conducted with a single disciplinary focus, in a context of short timescales and small budgets. Recognising the value and weight of the challenge involved in evaluation of innovations that aim to support the transitions of young people leaving care, this paper aims to provide a review of evaluation approaches and suggestions regarding how these might be developed.

As part of a wider research programme to improve understanding of the innovation process for young people leaving care, the authors conducted a scoping review of grey literature (publications which are not peer reviewed) focusing on evaluation of innovations in the UK over the past 10 years. The authors critiqued the evaluation approaches in each of the 22 reports they identified with an inter-disciplinary perspective, representing social care, public health and organisation science.

The authors identified challenges and opportunities for the development of evaluation approaches in three areas. Firstly, informed by social care, the authors suggest increased priority should be granted to participatory approaches to evaluation, within which involvement of young people leaving care should be central. Secondly, drawing on public health, there is potential for developing a common outcomes’ framework, including methods of data collection, analysis and reporting, which aid comparative analysis. Thirdly, application of theoretical frameworks from organisation science regarding the process of innovation can drive transferable lessons from local innovations to aid its spread.

By adopting the unique perspective of their multiple positions, the authors’ goal is to contribute to the development of evaluation approaches. Further, the authors hope to help identify innovations that work, enhance their spread, leverage resources and influence policy to support care leavers in their transitions to adulthood.

The purpose of this research paper is to study attitudinal responses to the tone of a voluntary disclosure. It is known that tone can affect market response. Existing literature assumes that investors' attitudes mediate these effects, but these attitudinal mediators have not been directly measured. The authors are especially interested in cases where a firm is reporting poor financial results. The purpose is to trace the mechanism and conditions under which tone affects the credibility of a voluntary disclosure.

The authors conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects study that manipulates financial performance (good/bad) and tone (positive/negative). The attitudinal dependent variable is the credibility of the management discussion, with persuasive intent as a mediator of the effects of tone on credibility.

In the case of bad financial results, a positive tone has a negative effect on credibility as the authors predict. This effect is fully mediated by perceived “persuasive intent”. In the case of good financial performance, credibility is higher when management adopts a positive tone, even though there, too, subjects perceive the persuasive intent.

The research paper establishes a bridge between the communications and finance literature on the effect of tone in voluntary disclosures. The empirical findings provide initial evidence and new detail regarding an attitudinal response (credibility) that the finance literature often assumes is responsible for mediating market responses to voluntary disclosures. One unexpected finding with interesting implications is that positive tone increases credibility in the case of good news. The implication is that a firm may indulge in taking a victory lap to celebrate good news, without harming the credibility of their corporate communications. Additional research is warranted that combines theory and methods from communications and finance, to further elaborate the attitudinal mechanisms behind the market effects of tone in voluntary disclosures.

At the most general level, the original contribution is the creation of a theoretical and methodological bridge between the communications and finance literature, regarding the effect of tone in voluntary disclosures. This research proposes an integrated theoretical framework, in which the concept of incentives shapes the relationships between the firm's financial situation, a disclosure's tone and its credibility. Methodologically, the authors employ an experimental method, which is more typical in the communications literature, to illuminate the attitudinal effects of tone that are frequently mentioned and assumed in the finance literature.

Corporate trainers' credibility has been universally ignored by researchers and its significance has remained elusive across cultures. Thus, the purpose of this present paper is to examine variations of trainers' credibility determinants in Canada and Morocco.

A comparative qualitative study with in‐depth interviews and the grounded theory approach were adopted to carry out the research. Participants in the study consisted of 60 civil servants employed in various governmental departments in Canada and Morocco.

A framework identifying distinct categories based on common determinants of trainers' credibility was constructed for each respective country. These categories were attributed the following designations: qualifications, perceived competence, perceived justice and perceived confidence for the Canadian sample; and qualifications, perceived competence, and personal attributes for the Moroccan sample. Similarities surfaced regarding some of the determinants in both cultures such as qualifications, and competence. However, Canadian respondents emphasized trainers' performance, fairness and confidence, while Moroccan trainees valued wisdom (hikma), honesty (sidk), trust (amanah) and the trainer as a role model.

The findings indicate that cultural values ought to be considered in trainers' credibility in efforts to enhance the level of comprehension regarding credibility determinants that could impact training success and effectiveness. It is also recommended that organizations consider taking into account the determinants of credibility during the selection process of trainers who will be primarily tasked with delivering corporate training to employees locally or in various cultural settings.

The paper provides groundbreaking insights as it is the first study to investigate trainers' credibility across cultures by resorting to an emic approach to provide a cross‐cultural perspective on the subject.

Although microblogs have become an important information source, the credibility of their postings is still a critical concern due to the open and unregulated nature. To understand the antecedents of microblog information credibility, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the dual-role of cognitive heuristics (i.e. the additivity and bias roles) and the effect of gender differences.

This study collected data via an online field survey of active microblog users, and a total of 204 valid responses was received.

This study demonstrates the dual-role of source credibility and vividness, the additivity role of microblog platform credibility, and the bias role of social endorsement. Furthermore, this study also found out gender difference that the additivity role of cognitive heuristics was stronger for men while bias role was stronger for women.

This research enriches the microblog literature by examining the cognitive heuristic determinants as key predictors of microblog information credibility, and contributes to the information credibility literature by identifying and analyzing the dual-role effect of cognitive heuristics and corresponding gender differences.

This study can help organizations better manage their reputation, especially during the reputation crises, and also serves as a reminder to microblog platform operators of the importance of their microblog platform credibility.

This study can help organizations better manage their reputation, especially during the reputation crises, and serves as a reminder to the microblog platform operators of the importance of their microblog platform credibility.

This study investigates the dual-role effect of cognitive heuristics (i.e. the additivity role and bias role) and corresponding gender differences that are less touched on before, and thus provides a more nuanced understanding of the more complex effects of cognitive heuristics.

The purpose of this paper is to discover the primary components of credibility of three types of online newspapers and how the credibility of news differs by type.

The paper participants were recruited at a large north‐eastern US university. All items of credibility scales were measured using seven‐point Likert‐type scales. For each of the three credibility scales, the mean was computed and the scales were analysed for similarities and differences. The scales were factor analysed to determine their underlying dimensions.

Three factors (expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness) were common to the three types, but the different factor structure of each type was identified. The result of multiple comparisons shows that the differences between all three types of online newspapers were significant. Also the summated scores of the mainstream type were the highest on most items. However, the summated score of the index type of online newspaper was the highest on attractiveness. Overall participants rated the independent type of online newspapers lowest in credibility.

The limitations and implications of findings are examined in three dimensions: theoretical implications, implications for the online newspaper industry, and implications for strategic media use.

The paper divides online newspapers into three categories according to their characteristics: mainstream, independent, and index type. These three types of online newspapers were evaluated in terms of credibility structure, which made this study useful and unique.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative theoretical framework that advances the underdeveloped stream of research that analyses how message authenticity influences the persuasiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication.

Theoretical and empirical literature on authenticity is reviewed to provide a comprehensive definition of message authenticity in CSR communication. An integrative theoretical framework is also developed to understand how message authenticity is enhanced through the design of informational content and it improves consumer responses to CSR communication.

The framework presented in the paper defends that message authenticity can be integrated in communication models based on three streams of research: identity-based brand management model, attribution theory and heuristic-systematic model. Consumer attributions of message authenticity can be notably improved with a message design based on CSR fit, social topic information and specificity. Authenticity improves message and source credibility by reducing consumer scepticism and enhancing their attributions of corporate expertise and trustworthiness. Indirect benefits of CSR message authenticity include increased consumer purchase, loyalty and advocacy behaviours.

The value of the paper resides in making the rather underdeveloped and inconclusive literature on authenticity accessible to CSR and communication researchers and practitioners. A theoretical framework is provided for further research that would contribute to improving the knowledge on the role that message authenticity plays in CSR communication.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of rumors' information characteristics on people's believing and spreading of rumors online.

This study employed a mixed-methods approach by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. In study 1, the authors explored different types of rumors and their information source characteristics through qualitative research. In study 2, the authors utilized the findings from study 1 to develop an empirical model to verify the impact of these characteristics on the public's behaviors of believing and spreading rumors by content analysis and quantitative research.

The results show that five information source characteristics – credibility, professionalism, attractiveness, mystery and concreteness – influence the spreading effect of different types of rumors.

This study contributes to rumor spreading research by deepening the theory of information source characteristics and adding to the emerging literature on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Insights from this research offer important practical implications for policymakers and online-platform operators by highlighting how to suppress the spread of rumors, particularly those associated with COVID-19.

This research introduces the theory of information source characteristics into the field of rumor spreading and adopts a mixed-methods approach, taking COVID-19 rumors as a typical case, which provides a unique perspective for a deeper understanding of rumor spreading's antecedences.

Users often struggle to select choosing among similar online services. To help them make informed decisions, it is important to establish a service reputation measurement mechanism. User-provided feedback ratings serve as a primary source of information for this mechanism, and ensuring the credibility of user feedback is crucial for a reliable reputation measurement. Most of the previous studies use passive detection to identify false feedback without creating incentives for honest reporting. Therefore, this study aims to develop a reputation measure for online services that can provide incentives for users to report honestly.

In this paper, the authors present a method that uses a peer prediction mechanism to evaluate user credibility, which evaluates users’ credibility with their reports by applying the strictly proper scoring rule. Considering the heterogeneity among users, the authors measure user similarity, identify similar users as peers to assess credibility and calculate service reputation using an improved expectation-maximization algorithm based on user credibility.

Theoretical analysis and experimental results verify that the proposed method motivates truthful reporting, effectively identifies malicious users and achieves high service rating accuracy.

The proposed method has significant practical value in evaluating the authenticity of user feedback and promoting honest reporting.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the framework of brand credibility effects is applicable to service categories and to examine if brand credibility's impact differs according to service type and involvement level.

Using a self‐administered survey (n=385), this study tests the proposed model, including six latent constructs: brand credibility, perceived quality, perceived risk, information costs saved, perceived value for money, and purchase intention.

The results indicate that brand credibility exerts a strong effect on purchase intention by increasing perceived quality, perceived value for money, and information costs saved, and by decreasing perceived risk across multiple service categories. The results also indicate that the magnitude of brand credibility's impact on purchase intention varies under different conditions with regard to utilitarian and hedonic services.

This study is based on student samples with a limited number of service categories. Future research is needed to examine the generalizability of the proposed model by using non‐student samples with different service classifications.

Establishing brand credibility seems to be especially effective in utilitarian services when marketing communication campaigns have the consistency of brand attributes that invoke either value for money or lower service brand‐related information efforts.

This study offers an initial attempt to explain how brand credibility influences its key outcomes under different service classes. Perceived value for money could be considered a new mediator of a causal relationship between brand credibility and purchase intention in service sectors.

Owing to the large amount of information available on Twitter (a micro blogging service) that is not necessarily true or believable, credibility of news published in such an electronic channel has become an important area for investigation in the field of web credibility. This paper aims to address this issue.

A system was developed to measure the credibility of news content published in Twitter. The system uses two approaches to assign credibility levels (low, high and average) to each tweet. The first approach is based on the similarity between Twitter posts (tweets) and authentic (i.e. verified) news sources. The second approach is based on the similarity with verified news sources in addition to a set of proposed features.

The evaluations of the two approaches showed that assigning credibility levels to Twitter tweets for the first approach has a higher precision and recall. Additional experiments showed that the linking feature has its impact on the second approach results.

The proposed system is experimental; thus further experiments are needed to prove these findings.

This paper contributes to the research on web credibility. It is believed to be the first which provides a proposed system to evaluate the credibility of Twitter news content automatically.