The role of media coverage in the audience’s legitimacy judgment about disruptive innovation: an empirical study of DiDi in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT The novelty of disruptive innovation is often beyond our understanding, but the news media coverage can help us understand it better. News media coverage may have a different effect on the audience’s legitimacy judgment. Positive news media coverage may get higher audience’s legitimacy judgment and negative news media coverage may get lower audience’s legitimacy judgment. Besides, different news sources may have a different effect on this process. Thus, from the perspective of news content analysis, what factors affect the audience’s legitimacy judgment? Does news reputation adjust the audience’s legitimacy judgment? Evidence from DiDi firm, on behalf of disruptive innovation in China, supports these questions and propositions. In line with institutional theory, we make three straight points. First, news coverage shows a significant positive relationship to the audience’s legitimacy judgment, user-oriented values and society-oriented values. Second, operational-risk and ethical-risk news coverage show a significant negative relationship to the audience’s legitimacy judgment. Third, news reputation partly moderates the audience’s legitimacy judgment to disruptive innovation at different stages. Thus, news media matters in a social setting.