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The current research delves into how different cues in messages (such as argument quality, usefulness and informativeness) and cues related to the source (such as credibility and expertise) contribute to the perceived credibility of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). The investigation also explores whether source cues influence the overall impact of message cues.

This study synthesizes findings from 100 previous empirical works through the application of meta-analysis.

The outcomes affirm the presence of both systematic and heuristic processing, the additive effects of both message and source cues and the bias effects of source cues. Moreover, the study identifies a connection between eWOM credibility and behavioral intention. Expanding on this, the research discovers that users’ tendency to avoid uncertainty moderates the impact of message and source cues on their judgment of eWoM credibility.

The research contributes to the eWOM literature by providing a heuristic-systematic model of eWoM credibility judgments. It provides new insights for online sellers, who can benefit from eWoM by fostering potential buyers' behavioral intention to purchase.

This study explores the link between additional reviews, credibility, and consumers’ online purchasing behavior.

We employ a 2 × 2 between-subjects design to measure subjects’ purchasing behavior with versus without additional reviews and with important versus non-important attributes. A total of 529 valid questionnaires are collected from university students across 30 Chinese provinces.

The addition of negative reviews to a positive initial review enhances consumers’ perceived credibility of the reviewer and the overall review content. This effect is positively moderated by the attribute importance in additional reviews. Moreover, we find that as the time interval increases, consumers’ perceived credibility gradually increases but eventually decreases after reaching a certain threshold. In addition, the attribute importance in additional reviews negatively moderates the impact of perceived credibility on consumer purchasing behavior.

Existing studies on first and subsequent reviews mainly focus on the difference in perceived usefulness between the two. They do not examine how additional reviews affect potential customers’ perceived credibility and their purchase decision-making. This study bridges the gap between the word-of-mouth literature and marketing practices.

The purpose of this research is to examine the extent to which source attractiveness and source credibility (or skill in a sporting context) provide an effective marketing strategy for Field Hockey in New Zealand, a minority sport Minority sports struggle to generate capital and have minimal sponsorship backing due to small participation and viewership rates compared to “major sports”. By understanding how source attractiveness and source credibility work in the context of a minority sport such as hockey, more effective advertising towards target audiences can be achieved. We also consider differences between advertising to players and no-players of the sport. This is the first research to consider these issues.

Four advertisements were created in an experimental design that manipulated the two variables: source credibility and source attractiveness, in an advertisement promoting Hockey. A survey was conducted, using an online questionnaire.

Results show that a mixture physical attractiveness and skill (credibility) increase attitudes towards the advertisement. This results in positive intentions to both watch and play hockey. When the respondents were segmented into hockey players and non-hockey players, only skill is effective for the Hockey Player segment, whereas both skill and attractiveness are effective for non-players.

Future research should include comparing hockey to further minority sports codes. Additionally, understanding if male models created the same effects would be particularly interesting for further research.

Management should focus on skill, with physical attractiveness being considered, but not as the most important attribute. If targeting hockey players, skill needs to be especially visible. Even though these elements could be argued to be within the “proverbial eye of the beholder”, the results have shown that in terms of sports advertising, it is possible to portray these two attributes in a generalised way.

This research to focuses on source credibility and attractiveness in a minority sporting context, in particular field hockey, whereas the majority of research considers major sporting codes. In addition, involvement with the sport is also considered.

This study aims to examine how virtual influencers (VIs) affect purchase intentions in tourism and hospitality e-commerce live streaming (THCLS) by focusing on the roles of VIs’ source credibility, trust in products, trust in VIs, emotional engagement, parasocial relationships and influencer–product congruence.

Survey data from 416 active viewers of VIs in THCLS were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This study highlights the importance of the VIs’ source credibility, which positively affects trust in the product, trust in VIs and emotional engagement. However, source credibility does not have a positive impact on parasocial relationships. Trust in products positively influences trust in VIs. Emotional engagement and trust in VIs significantly influence parasocial relationships, which, positively affects purchase intentions. Influencer–product congruence strengthens the link between parasocial relationships and purchase intentions but does not moderate the relationship between trust in VIs and purchase intentions. No significant gender differences were observed, although minor discrepancies were noted in the effect of trust in products on trust in VIs. The importance–performance map analysis revealed that parasocial relationships are the most important factor influencing purchase intentions, while influencer–product congruence has the highest performance, trust in products is the least important and VIs’ source credibility has the lowest performance.

This study provides actionable insights for marketers leveraging VIs in the THCLS sector, emphasizing strategies to enhance VI credibility, foster parasocial relationships, ensure influencer–product congruence and adopt gender-neutral marketing approaches to effectively influence purchase intentions.

This study offers theoretical and practical insights into the role of VIs in THCLS, illuminating their impact on consumer behaviour and purchase intentions.

This study aimed to investigate whether information from reliable news sources such as medical experts and government officials, along with governmental and individual risk responses, influences consumers’ perceptions of news and intention to seek more information. Additionally, it aimed to explore the relationships between these perceptions and consumers’ intentions to seek information in a food safety risk event.

A survey design methodology was employed. A quasi-experimental approach divided 470 Taiwanese participants into three groups, each exposed to varying online news content about food safety news, designed according to the Internalization-Distribution-Explanation-Action (IDEA) model. This involved different combinations of reliable sources and risk response advice to examine the impact on news comprehension and behaviour intentions.

The results indicated that consumers perceived the news as highly credible when they read it with reliable news sources or risk response advice. Governmental and individual risk response advice significantly impacted consumers’ understanding of news. In addition, perceptions of news credibility and understanding of news can increase individuals’ information-seeking intentions to protect themselves from food safety risks.

This study introduced novel insights into the application of the source credibility theory (SCT) model within Taiwanese food safety incidents, identifying key factors that motivate consumer information-seeking behaviour. It marks an initial attempt to incorporate the IDEA model-based risk communication content into research design, aligning with existing literature while highlighting the critical role of reliable sources in enhancing news credibility and consumer response.

Drawing upon the service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this paper provides an integrative model to investigate how argument quality and source credibility of CSR communication affects customer value co-creation behavior, resulting in increased brand trust. Additionally, it unveils how brand trust and the perception of COVID-19 risk influence both brand love and subjective well-being.

The data of this study were collected through survey questionnaire from 304 coffee shop customers using convenience sampling and tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to validate its model.

The research findings confirm the positive association between source credibility and customer value co-creation (i.e. customer participation and citizenship behavior). By contrast, argument quality is revealed to have a significantly positive effect on customer citizenship behavior (CCB) but a non-significant effect on customer participation behavior (CPB). Additionally, the study identifies that customer value co-creation behavior significantly promotes brand trust. Finally, findings indicate that brand trust and the perception of COVID-19 risk significantly influence brand love and subjective well-being.

This study contributes to the literature on CSR communication and S-D logic and provides new insights for marketers and advertisers to manage brands in the post-pandemic scenario through CSR communications. Furthermore, this study theoretically extends the ELM model to the CSR communication research. Finally, this study expands the relevant literature by clarifying the relationships between the perception of COVID-19 risk, brand love and subjective well-being.

Social media offers better prospect for travellers to seek for travel information, choose a location and share their personal travel experiences. The current study aims to examine how tourists gather information from YouTube shorts and its influence on their intention to use it for selection of an ecotourism destination.

The conceptual model of the study is constructed on information adoption model (IAM). An adaptive questionnaire was utilised to gather 374 valid responses. Partial least square structural equational modelling (PLS-SEM) was utilised for data analysis.

The results showed a positive significant relationship between all the constructs of IAM. The findings also show significant mediating effect of attitude and moderating effect of involvement between information quality and adoption also between source credibility and information usefulness.

This study will help destination marketers by providing valuable insights to them to promote their destinations more effectively on social media platforms. This study will also help travel influencers in understanding what are the factors they should focus on while providing information about ecotourism destination. It will additionally help the local economy and conveys a message to travellers about responsible travel behaviour when selecting or visiting ecotourism destination.

This is the very first attempt to investigate the adoption of YouTube shorts information and formulating behavioural intentions to utilise it for ecotourism destination selection.

Research on the impact of the engagement of online medical teams (OMTs) on patient evaluation, for example, satisfaction, remains insufficient. This study attempts to recognize the underlying mechanism of how OMTs’ engagement influences patient satisfaction by adopting social support as the mediator. This study also scrutinizes the moderating effects of the transactive memory system (TMS) on the link between OMTs’ engagement and social support.

We utilized a linear model that had fixed effects controlled at the team level for analysis. A bootstrapping approach using 5,000 samples was employed to test the mediation effect.

Our results reveal that OMTs’ engagement improves informational and emotional support, thereby promoting patient satisfaction. Specialization and credibility strengthen the impact of OMTs’ engagement on informational and emotional support. Simultaneously, coordination has an insignificant influence on the link between OMTs’ engagement and social support.

This study contributes to the literature on OMTs, social support, and TMS, providing insights into patients’ perceptions of OMTs’ engagement during online team consultation. This study also generates several implications for the practice of online health communities and OMTs.

This study draws on social influence and social comparison theories to investigate the effect of social media influencers on intention to visit with the mediating role of upward social comparison. It studies the reasons underlying people's intention to visit a destination from an emotional perspective.

PLS-SEM models were applied to a total of 527 responses.

This study provides empirical evidence supporting the Source Credibility Model's elements within the context of influencer marketing and travel intentions. Furthermore, it expands the current knowledge of upward social comparison emotions by reporting that upward contrastive emotions would partially mediate the relationship between expertise and intention to visit, and that upward assimilative emotions would fully mediate the relationship between attractiveness and intention to visit while partially mediating the relationship between trustworthiness and expertise and intention to visit.

The article adds new insights to tourism marketing as well as helps both destination marketers and travel influencers. For marketers, it is advised to collaborate with credible influencers known for expertise and trustworthiness, leveraging their perspectives to rebuild travel confidence and reassure tourists about safety measures. Travel influencers are recommended to convey their intrinsic passion and enthusiasm through their posts to create an inspiring connection with the audiences.

This paper is the first to address the relationship between travel influencers and intention to visit with the mediation role of both positive and negative emotions.

This study aims to identify factors affecting attitudes towards social media influencers (SMI) on halal cosmetics products. It subsequently examines how the latter stimulates consumers’ attitudes towards purchase intentions of halal cosmetics moderated by religiosity.

This study uses a survey of samples of Muslim cosmetic consumers in Indonesia. In total, 234 respondents were selected using the purposive sampling method; a self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. The survey data were analysed using partial least squares for structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to achieve the study’s objectives.

The findings revealed that trust, perceived expertise and perceived behavioural control positively and significantly affect attitudes towards SMI. However, the relationship between perceived credibility, subjective norm and attitude towards SMI is insignificant. In addition, the findings revealed that attitude towards SMI has a positive effect on explaining purchase intention. Notably, religiosity does not moderate attitudes towards SMI and purchase intention.

This study provides guidelines for companies in understanding the influence of religiosity on consumption behaviour in SMI marketing era. Thus, it will enable marketers to identify the factors influencing customers’ attitudes towards SMI and develop marketing strategies that effectively increase the customers’ intentions to purchase halal cosmetics. This will result in Indonesia becoming the epicentre of the global halal industry, particularly in the cosmetic sector.

This research provides a novel perspective by investigating how SMI shapes the purchase intention of Muslim consumers on halal cosmetics.