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This study aims to examine the mechanisms underlying social media commerce by investigating the interplay between platforms, people and information. Drawing upon trust transfer theory, the research model proposes that the platform’s information provision enhances the credibility of the information source, leading to increased information usefulness, adoption and sharing, ultimately influencing purchase intention.

The research design used in this study was a quantitative approach using a cross-sectional survey method. The study developed a research model based on trust transfer theory and hypothesized relationships between the platform’s information provision, information source credibility, information-related responses and purchase intention. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data and test the research hypotheses.

The findings supported most of the hypotheses and provided valuable insights into the role of information credibility in shaping consumers’ purchase intentions. Specifically, the study revealed that the platform’s information provision enhances the credibility of the information source, leading to increased information usefulness, adoption and sharing. Furthermore, information usefulness and adoption mediate the relationship between information source credibility and purchase intention.

The limitations of this research include the use of convenience sampling, which may not represent the broader population, and the cross-sectional design, which does not provide an in-depth understanding of the adoption process. The reliance on self-reported data and the limited scope of investigation with only six constructs are additional limitations. Future studies should consider national random sampling, longitudinal designs, multiple data sources and explore negative effects and other potential mediating variables. Despite these limitations, this research contributes to the understanding of social media commerce mechanisms and provides valuable insights for practitioners in the field.

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for platform providers and marketers in the social media commerce environment. First, the study emphasizes the importance of effective messaging in improving information credibility. Platform providers should focus on delivering accurate and trustworthy information to enhance consumers’ perceptions of product quality and increase purchase intentions. Second, marketers can leverage the information-related factors identified in this study, such as information usefulness and adoption, to optimize their marketing efforts. By understanding how consumers perceive and interact with information on social media platforms, marketers can tailor their strategies to effectively engage and influence potential customers. Overall, these practical implications can enhance success in the competitive social media commerce landscape.

The social implications of this study are significant for social media commerce practitioners. The findings highlight the importance of effective messaging and information provision on social media platforms in improving information credibility, thereby enhancing purchase intention. By understanding the mechanisms that drive consumer behavior in the context of social media commerce, platform providers and marketers can optimize their marketing efforts. This includes focusing on delivering trustworthy and useful information, fostering information adoption and sharing among users and ultimately increasing the likelihood of successful transactions. These insights provide valuable guidance for practitioners to navigate the competitive landscape of social media commerce and enhance their chances of success.

The originality of this research lies in its application of trust transfer theory to investigate the mechanisms driving social media commerce. By examining the interplay between platform, people and information, the study specifically focuses on the role of the platform’s information provision in enhancing information credibility and its impact on information-related responses and purchase intentions. This study extends the understanding of the trust transfer mechanism between customers and sellers/brands in customer-to-customer social commerce by emphasizing the importance of effective messaging and information credibility in shaping consumer behavior. The empirical findings contribute to the understanding of information trust transfer and provide a unique perspective on the underlying mechanisms that drive social media commerce.

This paper deals with external audits, which are now commonly used in many industries (e.g. food, automotive and electrical). This study aims to assess whether a given organization meets the specific criteria. If the audit ends with a positive result, information about it is provided to selected interested parties, e.g. clients or contractors. Credibility is pivotal in adding value for all interested parties within the audit processes. This study seeks the factors which, in the opinion of the audited enterprises, have the most decisive impact on the credibility of external audits.

In keeping with the extant literature, research questions were developed regarding the factors influencing the credibility assessment of external audits. Data collected from 100 companies in the Polish food sector were used to construct the model and carry out statistical analyses. Linear regression analyses were also applied to determine the key factors influencing the credibility of audits.

This study is part of the research trend on the rationality of external audits and certification of quality management systems. This paper identifies nine main factors shaping the credibility of external audits. Two of them have the most decisive influence on credibility. The first one is the professional audit method (procedure). The second factor is the auditor’s knowledge of the specificity of the audited area.

This study did not consider the impact that the image/credibility of the organization represented by the auditors may have on the reliability of audits. This is one of the fundamental limitations that should be considered when analyzing the obtained results. To recognize this type of dependence, additional research should be carried out. Another limitation is that the research covers the food industry only. It would be interesting to know the situation in other types of industries.

This paper looks at the possibility of increasing the added value for audited enterprises. The proposed model can be used by managers of organizations conducting external audits and auditors to effectively use resources for process improvement, influencing the maximization of credibility of activities in the area of conformity assessment.

The originality of this study lies in adopting the perspective of audited enterprises in assessing the credibility of audits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that adopts this approach. This paper contributes to the literature, particularly to better understand audited enterprises’ behavior (trust in audit results, satisfaction with audits, etc.).

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 study aims to identify critical factors that influence football fans’ support of their favorite team by examining the impact of social responsibility, brand credibility and team brand equity on patronage intentions of professional football teams.

An online survey collected data from 331 football fans of the Persian Gulf Premier League (PGPL) in Iran. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is able to influence brand equity, brand credibility and patronage intentions. Also, brand equity and brand credibility were found to be positively related to patronage intentions. In addition to that, the findings show that brand equity and team credibility partially mediate the relationship between CSR and patronage intentions.

The findings provide valuable insights to sports teams/club managers aiming to attract new fans and retain current ones by investing in CSR and enhancing brand credibility and equity. Strategies to integrate CSR into relationship marketing and brand management are outlined.

This study empirically highlights the critical role of adhering to CSR and the effects of brand credibility and equity in enhancing patronage intentions among football team fans.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effect of homophily between trust in social media influencers (SMIs) and credibility of the post in influencer marketing by incorporating the similarity attraction theory (SAT) and analysing the effect of trust in SMIs on online purchase intention and credibility of the post. This study also explored the mediating role of influencers’ credibility of the post between trust in SMIs and online purchase intention.

The data were collected from 417 respondents in Jaipur, India, using an online questionnaire via Google Forms. A convenience sampling technique was employed to collect the data. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses with the help of SmartPLS version 4.

The results exhibit a positive and significant influence of trust in SMIs on credibility of the post and online purchase intention. Also, this study found a positive and significant relationship between credibility of the post and online purchase intention. Additionally, credibility of the post had a positive and significant mediation role in the relationship between trust in SMIs and online purchase intention. In addition, homophily positively moderated the relationship between trust in SMIs and credibility of the post.

The findings of this study can be used by marketing professionals working in the e-commerce industry to ensure their continued in success using the right influencers for their specific target audiences and help them create and implement more effective promotional strategies, increasing brand awareness, announcing sales, using them for creative content and so on.

Until now, there has been no study in the Indian context that has tested the moderation effect of homophily between the trust in SMIs and credibility of the post by incorporating the SAT, according to the researchers’ knowledge. Furthermore, this novel piece of research explored the relationship between trust in SMIs and online purchase intention with credibility of the post as a mediator.

This study aims to analyse how first-year undergraduate audiovisual communication students assess the credibility and reliability of information on Wikipedia in Basque and analyse whether the experience of being a Wikipedia editor helps to improve students’ perceptions of Wikipedia’s trustworthiness. The purpose of this project was to help students to better understand the credibility mechanisms of Wikipedia in Basque regarding the work of editing and creating entries. Do students’ perceptions about how reliable Wikipedia is change if they receive training as Wikipedia content editors and understand Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms? What are their perceptions about the credibility of Wikipedia?

The authors observed and analysed students’ behaviour and perceptions when creating Wikipedia articles and learning about the process of evaluating Wikipedia. This research was carried out at [masked for review] over four consecutive years, where 188 students in the Degree Programme in Audiovisual Communication participated through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews.

After the experience of creating content on Wikipedia and learning about Wikipedia’s credibility mechanisms experientially, the majority of students reported that their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility had increased, and 70% of students believed Wikipedia to be reliable or more reliable than expected. A smaller number of students stated that understanding Wikipedia’s editing processes decreased their perception of Wikipedia’s credibility.

This project will lead to a better understanding of the performance of students in editing content on Wikipedia and of the impact that this editing experience has on students’ perceptions of credibility with respect to Wikipedia. It will make it possible to better incorporate Wikipedia content editing into the learning processes of students and citizens. This study provides interesting keys to improving the reliability and credibility of Wikipedia among students.

As the study examined Basque Wikipedia, it has important social implications since Basque is a minority language and Wikipedia is the main sources of information for students who study in Basque.

The authors have been analysing the credibility of information in general and that of information on Wikipedia in particular since 2010. Based on this experience, the authors decided to design this study so that it was carried out while the students were creating and editing Wikipedia content as part of a project in their educational curriculum. Furthermore, the study expands the body of research carried out to date by incorporating the perspectives of media studies students.

Source credibility is a key influencing factor across both commercial and social marketing. It is perhaps even more important for the latter given that the issues under consideration generally have substantial implications for both individual and societal health and well-being. The Act-Belong-Commit campaign is a world-first population-wide application of social marketing in the area of positive mental health promotion. This study aims to focus on the perceived credibility of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign as a source of information about mental health as a predictor of three types of behavioural responses to the campaign: adopting mental health enhancing behaviours; seeking information about mental health and mental health problems; and seeking help for a mental health problem.

A state-wide survey was undertaken of the adult population in an Australian state where the Act-Belong-Commit campaign originated. The survey included measures of the above three behavioural responses to the campaign and measures of respondents’ perceptions of Act-Belong-Commit’s source credibility. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine whether the three behavioural responses can be predicted based on perceived source credibility. The predictive performance of the model was examined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis.

Greater perceived source credibility was significantly associated with having done something for their mental health and for having sought information, and an increased likelihood, but not significantly so, of having sought help for a mental health problem.

Despite the acknowledged importance of source credibility, there has been little published research that the authors are aware of that has looked at the impact of such on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published study of the association between source credibility and behavioural response to a social marketing campaign.

This chapter introduces linguistic delivery style to auditing research, demonstrates how linguistic delivery style relates to client credibility, and shows how linguistic delivery style and client credibility influences auditors’ judgment. Two hundred auditors participated in an analytical procedures task. The results indicate that high client credibility and powerful linguistic delivery style increase the auditor's assessed likelihood that the explanation accounts for the fluctuation and decrease their intent to perform additional testing. Moreover, powerless linguistic delivery style from an otherwise high credibility client leads to auditor judgments and intentions that are indistinguishable from those that arise from a low credibility client. Finally, evidence indicates that linguistic delivery style is a fourth component of credibility.

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.

Data were collected from loan officers using a computerized process-tracing program to help shed some light on how source credibility impacts the judgments made by loan officers. Loan officers did not structure loans more restrictively regardless of whether they were in the positive or negative character condition or whether they approved or denied the loan. Negative source credibility affected decision process effort but did not produce the tradeoff between loan approval and loan structure that is suggested in the literature. Although significantly more (fewer) loans were denied when character information was negative (positive), a majority of loan officers in the negative character condition approved the loan. While most loan officers were aware of negative source credibility, they did not react by denying loans or adjusting loan structure.