Determinants of eWOM on hospitality CSR issues. In Facebook we trust?

Abstract

Social media has emerged as a powerful and successful tool to disseminate information relating to corporate social responsibility (CSR) in different industries, including the hospitality context. Similarly, the media plays a major role in the domain of CSR since news media materializes corporate goals regarding CSR issues. However, no prior studies have explored the main factors that influence electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on CSR issues covered by the media through social media. This research incorporates the characteristics of information (specific) and individuals’ informational predisposition (general) into an integrative model to examine the key predictors of intention to share and comment on negative CSR news covered by a specific media outlet on a particular social networking site (SNS): Facebook. To empirically test the proposed model, 208 Facebook users were surveyed in Spain. The results show that information value, Facebook trust and self-disclosure have a positive impact on eWOM intentions. It also confirmed that source credibility has a positive impact on information value. However, neither significant relationship was found between Facebook trust and privacy concerns, nor between this variable and intentions to share and comment. Finally, theoretical conclusions, managerial implications, and limitations are discussed.