Will Great Power Come with Great Responsibility Only? A Dual Model of Consumer Power and Negative WOM on Social Media Review Platforms

Abstract

With the popularization of social media and review platforms, customers play a role as reviewers and realize an online power to influence others. This paper attempts to examine the effect of power, and its underlying mechanisms, on the intention to share negative word-of-mouth (NWOM). Integrating self-determination theory with the agentic-communal framework, we propose a research model investigating communal and agentic drives on NWOM sharing. The results show that power is positively related to NWOM, while both prosocial motivation (the communal drive) and self-enhancement (the agentic drive) mediate the relationship. As extrinsic conditions, brand awareness and compensation buffer the mediating effect of power on NWOM through prosocial motivation and self-enhancement. In addition, three-way interaction results indicate that the indirect effects through prosocial motivation and self-enhancement are both the strongest when brand awareness is lower and there is no compensation. Yet the indirect effects become non-significant when well-known brands offer compensation. This study contributes new insights to the theoretical development and provides practical implications for WOM marketing.