Social Endorsement Research Articles

Monetization Of Digital Content: Drivers Of Revenue On Q&A Platforms

ABSTRACT Valuation of digital content has important individual, organizational, and microeconomic implications. Yet, the existing understanding of digital content consumption is focused primarily on consumption of free content. This means, that digital content is not a source of revenue for contributors and not directly tied to the revenue or expenses of these platforms and that it is practically impossible to capture its value in national income accounts. Academic and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that sharing of revenue from paid viewership in paid question-and-answer (Q&A) platforms is a factor that differentiates successful platforms, such as Weibo Q&A, from unsuccessful ones, such as Google Answers. Yet, the growing paid Q&A literature does not shed much light on our understanding of the drivers of revenues from paid viewership. Our study focuses on the unique revenue sharing of paid viewership among stakeholders because this feature makes paid Q&A a success and helps ensure the sustainability of the hosting social media platform. This study draws upon signaling theory to identify the drivers of the sales of paid viewership. We further draw on the cognitive view of signal attention and interpretation and the literature on social media trend and the literature on information perishability to hypothesize the differential moderating impacts of question price and content perishability. Consistent with the literature, we found the positive impacts of social media status and social endorsement on the sales of paid viewership. Extending past literature, we found an inverted-U impact of social feedback and the differential moderating effects of question price and content perishability on the sales of paid viewership.

Online Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the United Kingdom

We explore the implications of online social endorsement for the Covid-19 vaccination program in the United Kingdom. Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing problem, but it has assumed great urgency due to the pandemic. By early 2021, the United Kingdom had the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality per million of population. Our survey of a nationally representative sample of UK adults ( N = 5,114) measured socio-demographics, social and political attitudes, media diet for getting news about Covid-19, and intention to use social media and personal messaging apps to encourage or discourage vaccination against Covid-19. Cluster analysis identified six distinct media diet groups: news avoiders, mainstream/official news samplers, super seekers, omnivores, the social media dependent, and the TV dependent. We assessed whether these media diets, together with key attitudes, including Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy mentality, and the news-finds-me attitude (meaning giving less priority to active monitoring of news and relying more on one’s online networks of friends for information), predict the intention to encourage or discourage vaccination. Overall, super-seeker and omnivorous media diets are more likely than other media diets to be associated with the online encouragement of vaccination. Combinations of (a) news avoidance and high levels of the news-finds-me attitude and (b) social media dependence and high levels of conspiracy mentality are most likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination. In the direct statistical model, a TV-dependent media diet is more likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination, but the moderation model shows that a TV-dependent diet most strongly attenuates the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and discouraging vaccination. Our findings support public health communication based on four main methods. First, direct contact, through the post, workplace, or community structures, and through phone counseling via local health services, could reach the news avoiders. Second, TV public information advertisements should point to authoritative information sources, such as National Health Service (NHS) and other public health websites, which should then feature clear and simple ways for people to share material among their online social networks. Third, informative social media campaigns will provide super seekers with good resources to share, while also encouraging the social media dependent to browse away from social media platforms and visit reliable and authoritative online sources. Fourth, social media companies should expand and intensify their removal of vaccine disinformation and anti-vax accounts, and such efforts should be monitored by well-resourced, independent organizations.

Understanding Users Attitude to Social Endorsement Advertising of Embarrassing Product

Users on social media have increased rapidly in recent years, social media advertising has become a popular marketing tool for companies to promote their products. A feature of social media advertising is that marketers can use customers' online behavior to create customized advertisements, which are also known as targeting ads. In this study, we conducted experimental testing 2 (advertising type) X2 (product type) to see if increased knowledge of social advertising would influence users' attitudes towards ads. We separated two different types of advertising on Facebook, namely remarketing and social support, and two different types of products, which advertised general products and ads about embarrassing products. The results of this study are that the increase in advertising knowledge is able to (1) affect the perceived value of advertisements from different types of products and (2) different types of advertisements do not affect user attitudes towards advertisements. For future research, we recommend focusing primarily on the demographic and environmental variables of digital advertising users about embarrassing products.

The Impact of Social Endorsement Cues and Manipulability Concerns on Perceptions of News Credibility.

Social endorsement cues (SEC) offer information about how online users have engaged and evaluated online content. Some view that SEC thus can serve as useful heuristics when users evaluate the credibility of news content on social media. At the same time, SEC can be manipulated by a variety of commercial and political actors on social media. This study examines whether SEC influence individuals' credibility judgments of political news on social media, and how the salience of concerns that SEC can be manipulated by others can undermine the perceived credibility. Using an experiment, we found that SEC had a negative influence on news credibility, regardless of whether or not SEC manipulability concerns were primed. An independent effect of SEC manipulability concerns was also found, such that priming thoughts about the manipulability of SEC led participants to rate the news post as less credible, regardless of whether that post included SEC. These results suggest a spillover effect whereby concerns over the manipulation of SEC can create doubt about the authenticity of other cues from the news (e.g., source and message), and lead to perceptions that news shared on social media can be manipulated more generally.

Being dragged into adulthood? Young people’s agency concerning sex, relationships and marriage in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia

This study aimed to explore how young people exercise agency in rural Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia in relation to sex, relationships and marriage, to inform local programmes aiming to prevent teenage pregnancy and child marriage. In each country, focus group discussions with young people and parents, in-depth interviews with young people and a variety of other participants, and a household survey with young people (15-24 years) were conducted. We found that (child) marriage was often a response to teenage pregnancy, which was highly prevalent in all study areas. Young people’s aspirations to enter adulthood were influenced by their life circumstances. Initiation ceremonies symbolised the transition to adulthood and gave social endorsement to young people to start engaging in (often unprotected) sexual activity. Given the uncertain socio-economic context, resource constraints led families to marry off their daughters; or girls themselves to marry early to relieve the burden on their families, but also to get pregnant as a ‘next step’ towards adulthood. Transactional sex was common. These intersecting cultural, social and economic contextual factors constrained young women’s agency, more as compared to young men. However, young women did manoeuvre within contextual constraints to exercise a degree of agency.

Turning social endorsement into brand passion

Internet technology has popularized the “like” as a type of social endorsements on social media. Despite the high impact of brand passion on customer behavior and brand performance, questions remain regarding how social endorsement triggers customer desires toward a brand. This study establishes “like-clicking” behavior on social media as a form of friend-bonding social endorsement and crowd-bridging social endorsement, based on theories of social capital and self-congruence, and examines the extent to which endorsement turns into emotional attachment (i.e., brand passion). Two approaches were employed: Partial Least Square (PLS) and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (FsQCA). The PLS and fsQCA results revealed causal and structural associations of friend-bonding and crowd-bridging social endorsements with self-verification and self-enhancement, and thereby with the outcome of obsessive and harmonious brand passion. These findings enrich our understanding of social endorsement. Encouraging customers to endorse the brand through passionate behavior is a sound marketing strategy.

Who else likes it? Perceived gender of social endorsers predicts gender equality support

Research suggests that messaging by men can garner broader support from both men and women around gender equality issues. How might this influence operate in a social media environment which includes peripheral cues in addition to the message sender's identity such as the number and identities of people who are engaging with the message? The present online experiment (N = 344) examines how the actual and presumed gender identity of a tweet's social endorsers influence group norms and solidarity for gender equality among men. Results reveal that higher estimates of male endorsement lead men to have greater support for gender equality policies. These results highlight the importance of ingroup norms communicated through social endorsements in garnering men's support for gender equality within a social media context.

Demographic, personality, and social cognition correlates of coronavirus guideline adherence in a U.S. sample.

The present study examined patterns and psychosocial correlates of coronavirus guideline adherence in a U.S. sample (N = 500) during the initial 15-day period advocated by the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Descriptive and correlational analyses were used to examine the frequency of past 7-day adherence to each of 10 guidelines, as well as overall adherence. Guided by a disposition-belief-motivation model of health behavior, path analyses tested associations of personality traits and demographic factors to overall adherence via perceived norms, perceived control, attitudes, and self-efficacy related to guideline adherence, as well as perceived exposure risk and perceived health consequence if exposed. Adherence ranged from 94.4% reporting always avoiding eating/drinking inside bars/restaurants/food courts to 13.6% reporting always avoiding touching one's face. Modeling showed total associations with overall adherence for greater conscientiousness (β = .191, p < .001), openness (β = .098, p < .05), perceptions of social endorsement (β = .202, p < .001), positive attitudes (β = .105, p < .05), self-efficacy (β = .234, p < .001), and the presence versus absence or uncertainty of a shelter-in-place order (β = .102, p < .01). Age, self-rated health, sex, education, income, children in the household, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism, perceived exposure risk, and perceived health consequence showed null-to-negligible associations with overall adherence. The results clarify adherence frequency, highlight characteristics associated with greater adherence, and suggest the need to strengthen the social contract between government and citizenry by clearly communicating adherence benefits, costs, and timelines. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

How Message Features and Social Endorsements Affect the Longevity of News Sharing

This study examined how message features and social endorsements affect the longevity of audience news sharing by analyzing behavioral data of social retransmission of New York Times health news articles, and associated article content and context data. The results showed that information utility-related message features increased the duration for which articles prompted email-based sharing, whereas emotional positivity and controversiality increased the longevity of social media-based sharing. Expressed emotional evocativeness and the absence of death-related words lengthened the duration for which articles prompted both email- and social media-based sharing. News retransmission, via either email or social media, was more likely to persist when the articles stayed on the “most-emailed” list for a longer time, showing social endorsement-driven cumulative advantage effects. The results further revealed synergistic interaction effects between social endorsements and message features. While social endorsements produced strong cumulative-advantage effects on the longevity of news sharing, articles with certain message features that are diagnostic of their inherent share-worthiness generated even stronger effects than those articles that appeared on the “most-emailed” list for the same amount of time but lacked such features. These features were expressed emotional evocativeness (email-based sharing), the absence of death-related words, and exemplification (social media-based sharing).

The Impact of Peer-Influence: How Does Social Network Endorsement Affect Nonprofits and For-Profit Companies?

ABSTRACT Does seeing a friend supporting a nonprofit organization on social media affect one’s subsequent behavior on social media? How is it different from seeing a friend supporting a luxury or utilitarian company on social media? In three experiments, we answer these questions by examining the differential influences of peer endorsement types (i.e., Facebook vs. offline social engagement) on one’s subsequent social behavior on Facebook. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 show that for a nonprofit organization, peer-influence is more beneficial when encountered in an offline social engagement (e.g., wearing a cause pin as a result of donation) than viewed on Facebook. However, for a utilitarian company, peer-influence is more beneficial when it happens on Facebook than offline social engagement. For luxury companies, there is no differential effect of peer-influence on Facebook or face-to-face. Drawing on costly signaling theory, Experiment 2 demonstrates that perceived altruism is the underlying mechanism for the positive effect of offline social engagement for nonprofit organizations. Experiment 3 introduces the self-company connection as the boundary condition and shows that the positive effect of peers’ offline social endorsement for nonprofits (and Facebook endorsement for utilitarian companies) only emerges when the self-company connection to the nonprofits is low.

Investigating the effect of social endorsement on customer brand relationships by using statistical analysis and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)

This study investigated how like-clicking activities on social media can signal users' social endorsement behaviors, which influence customer–brand relationships. Through the simple clicking of emojis, consumers can engage with and express their perceptions regarding brands on social media. Researchers have paid limited attention to the direct and indirect influence of liking behaviors on users in online social networking ecosystems. Specifically, how a user is influenced by others' liking behaviors remains unclear. On the basis of social identity theory and signaling theory, this study proposes that “likes” in social media contexts are a form of social endorsement. A research framework was developed to investigate the effects of two types of social endorsement, namely friend endorsement and crowd endorsement, over two studies. In study 1, an online survey was conducted with Facebook users recruited through convenient sampling, and in study 2, an experiment was performed with participants from Amazon MTurk. This research adopted statistical analysis and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the influence of friend and crowd endorsement on users' like-clicking behavior. Results indicated that both friend and crowd endorsement exert positive influences on users’ like-clicking behavior. Results also indicated that liking behaviors result in enhanced brand attitude, customer engagement, and customer–brand identification, all of which facilitate purchase intention. Moreover, fsQCA results supported the conjunctural causal effects of social endorsements and suggested other two conditions for such causalities.

소셜 미디어 뉴스콘텐츠 선호에 대한 선택적 노출과 사회적 지지의 효과 연구 : 페이스북 이용을 중심으로

이 연구는 페이스북 환경에서 개인의 정치 성향과 유사한 정보를 선호하는 선택적 노출 경향과 타 이용자의 추천인 사회적 지지(페이스북의 경우 ‘좋아요’ 수)가 뉴스 선택 과정에서 어떠한 영향을 미치는지 탐구했다. 본 실험연구는 2(뉴스 출처의 정치 성향: 보수적/진보적) X 2(사회적 지지: 좋아요 수의 높음/낮음)의 디자인으로 4가지 뉴스 스토리를 조작하여 진행하였다. 실험결과, 뉴스 출처의 정치 성향만 제시된 조건에 노출된 참가자들은 자신의 정치 성향과 비슷한 출처의 뉴스를 선호하였고, 그 경향은 경성뉴스에서 더 뚜렷하게 나타났다(t=-2.06, p.05). ‘좋아요’의 수로 대표되는 사회적 지지 조건에 노출된 참가자들은 사회적 지지가 높은 뉴스를 선호하였고, 그 경향은 연성뉴스에서 더 뚜렷하게 나타났다(t=2.79, p.01).

Do US Social Work Students View Social Work as a Human Rights Profession? Levels of Support for Human Rights Statements Among BSW and MSW Students

Social work practice not centered on human rights may unintentionally perpetuate human rights abuses, and these abuses can have global implications. US-based social work educators have made efforts to directly focus social work education on human rights since 2008, when the US-based Council on Social Work Education included a human rights competency. However, insufficient data exists regarding US-based social work students’ views on human rights, as well as the possible relationship between exposure to human rights content in social work education and student endorsement of human rights. The present research attempts to address both issues: Using McPherson and Abell’s (2012) 25-item Human Rights Engagement in Social Work scale (HRESW), the author assessed the overall endorsement of human rights perspectives by students in a social work program in the western United States, and examined differences between students at different levels in the program to evaluate the effectiveness of increased exposure to human rights content. Descriptive results from 171 BSW and MSW students showed overall endorsement of human rights. Ten of the 25 HRESW items showed stronger agreement among upper-division BSW and MSW students when compared with their lower-division BSW peers at statistically significant levels; these items were related to social and economic rights. When comparing online and face-to-face students, one HRESW item showed a statistically significant difference. Overall results indicate that social work students have a relatively high level of human rights endorsement, which has the potential to increase with continual exposure to human rights content in social work courses.

745-P: Novel Interventions in Children’s Healthcare (NICH): Attending to the Social Determinants of Health

Objective: Novel Interventions in Children’s Healthcare (NICH) is a community-based, family-focused intervention for youth with T1D and is associated with improved glycemic control and lower rates of acute care utilization. This study examines whether NICH is associated with changes in preventative outpatient attendance, with specific attention to the role of social determinants of health (SDoH) as potential moderators. Methods: Youth in NICH with T1D were included if they had SDoH and electronic health record (EHR) data available (n=52). Retrospective EHR review included outpatient attendance (endocrinology, primary care) for the years prior to and following NICH initiation and social risk endorsement (e.g., food and housing security). Youth mean age was 14.5 years; 59% were female; and 77% were non-Hispanic Caucasian. Results: More than half of NICH families (52%) endorsed food insecurity, with 49% and 40% reporting housing insecurity and unreliable transportation, respectively. Prior to NICH services, minority youth and those experiencing food insecurity attended significantly fewer preventative outpatient appointments (p&amp;lt;.05). There were no significant differences in total number of outpatient visits attended while in NICH for the overall sample; however, following NICH initiation, minority youth demonstrated a significant increase in attendance, from 2.4 to 4.9 per year, and a significantly larger increase in attendance when compared to youth of majority race (p=.01). Conclusions: This is the first study to examine the impact of NICH on preventative care access. There were no significant differences in total number of appointments attended while in NICH, which is unsurprising given that families are already attending additional weekly home sessions during program participation. However, minority youth seem to particularly benefit from NICH services, demonstrating more equitable access to preventative outpatient care during program involvement. Disclosure A. Cantu: None. D.V. Wagner: None. C. Jenisch: None. H. Luzod: None. H. Gottfried-Lee: None. M.A. Harris: None. Funding JDRF; The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust

The sexual double standard and topic avoidance in friendships

ABSTRACT Grounded in sexual script theory, this research explored the relationships between casual sexual encounters, personal and perceived social endorsement of the sexual double standard (SDS), and topic avoidance about casual sex (TACS). Participants (N = 327) were recruited from Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk and responded to a survey including measures assessing the aforementioned variables. A number of gender differences were apparent in the results. For men, personal and perceived social endorsement of the SDS were significantly and positively associated with casual sexual activity, whereas these same associations were not significant for women. For women, both personal and perceived social endorsement were significantly and positively associated with TACS, but for men, personal endorsement of the SDS was significantly inversely associated with TACS. Lastly, for men, the variable most strongly associated with TACS was personal endorsement of the SDS, whereas it was perceived social endorsement of the SDS for women. Explanations for these findings are offered based on the influence of individuals’ cognitions, behaviors, and cultural scripts.

Choosing to Avoid? A Conjoint Experimental Study to Understand Selective Exposure and Avoidance on Social Media

ABSTRACT Social media platforms provide multiple affordances, which convey several cues to guide users in making decisions about which news to consume. Traditional factorial designs have failed to experimentally study the effects of multiple, simultaneous cues operating on social media. As a result, there is little consensus in the literature about their exact effects on news choice. In this study, we use a conjoint experimental design to examine how source outlet cues, message cues, and social endorsement cues shape news selectivity on Facebook. We find that people significantly avoid news items with out-party outlet and message cues. We also find that people select news based only on in-party messages cues, but this effect is smaller than the avoidance of out-party cues. Only strong partisans demonstrate a preference for news items with in-party source and message cues. Finally, we find no evidence that social endorsement affects people’s news selection behavior.

Exploring payment behavior for live courses in social Q&A communities: An information foraging perspective

People are increasingly searching for information in social Q&A communities, especially through a new form of paid knowledge product, namely, live course. Such course provides a way for users to interact synchronously with content creators online. However, how this knowledge product is accepted and why users pay for it deserve attention from researchers. In this study, a research model was developed based on information foraging theory (IFT) and social information foraging (SIF) theory to analyze users’ information processing and evaluation when making payment decisions. Our research model was validated by collecting subjective and objective data from a Chinese social Q&A community that has been successful in offering live course services. We found that perceived quality of free content, perceived credibility of content creators, and perceived quantity of participants positively influence users’ willingness to pay, and thus, positively affects users’ payment behavior. Unexpectedly, social endorsement negatively moderates the relationship between willingness to pay and payment behavior. This study enhances the theoretical understanding of the drivers of users’ payment for live courses in social Q&A communities. For IS practice, our findings provide unique insights for community managers and content creators on how to operate paid knowledge products appropriately and effectively.

What Affects First- and Second-Level Selective Exposure to Journalistic News? A Social Media Online Experiment

ABSTRACT On social media, journalistic news products compete with entertainment-oriented and user-generated contents on two different stages of news use: First, users navigate their attention through a continuous stream of information in their newsfeed and, second, they potentially click on some of these posts to spend time with the actual full-contents. The present study conceptualizes these two types of news use behaviors in social media environments as first- and second-level selective exposure. Based on this new approach, we investigated main drivers of journalistic news exposure on both exposure levels in an online survey experiment before the German federal election in 2017 (N = 210). To achieve high ecological validity, we developed a Newsfeed Exposure Observer (NEO)-Framework to recreate realistic user settings for online experiments studying selective exposure in the digital era, where news posts are complemented by popularity cues like social endorsements or individual recommendations. Findings show that, at the first level of selective exposure, attention to journalistic news posts is particularly affected by political interest. However, the decision to click on posts in the newsfeed and to spend time with the linked contents seems more strongly driven by social factors than by individual predispositions.

From Logic Acceptance to Logic Rejection: The Process of Destabilization in Hybrid Organizations

We study the introduction of the private logic into a mature Italian hospital that was governed previously as a hybrid of professional and public logics. Intriguingly, the reconstituted hospital was for several years widely praised for its strong clinical and financial performance, but quickly and with little warning, it became riven by political differences that led to its demise. Through our case analysis, we develop a multilevel model that reveals the destabilizing process that can unfold when a new logic enters an established organization. We contribute to the hybrids literature by explaining the puzzle of how a new logic can become accepted and then rejected in organizations, emphasizing the critical importance of the interaction between the audience, organization, and practice levels. Crucially, we reveal that positive feedback from multiple audiences may be a mixed blessing for hybrids: although it offers resource and legitimacy advantages, it can induce internal tensions with severe destabilizing consequences. Our findings and model also run counter to two core assumptions within the institutional literature: that social endorsement is advantageous and that alignment with institutional expectations results in stabilization. We qualify these assumptions and indicate the circumstances under which they are unlikely to hold.

Reinforcement of brands of faith with the paradox of cultural divergence in Indian perspective

PurposeSelf-esteem values, with the new art of living, in the minds of Indians, lead to establish faith among the spiritual organization. Later on, the spiritual organizations brand their names and market the products in their branded name. These brands, which are inspired by faith and created by Indian spiritual gurus, have even disrupted the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market by being customer-centric instead of being geared by lucrative returns. It is in this context that this paper aims to find the cultural divergence factors that lead to change the consumption pattern of FMCG and how such brands of faith have been segmented in the Indian perspective by spiritual gurus. The research concludes that cultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation influence the brands that are inspired by faith. Spiritual gurus in India are using sociocultural marketing activities such as social endorsement and cause-related marketing strategies for segmenting the markets.Design/methodology/approachThe primary data were collected from the 1,678 customers of the Isha products. The respondents were selected based on the snowball sampling. The responses were collected from the followers who visited the foundation at least three times during the period of two years in Coimbatore and purchased Isha products worth more than Rs 500. The data were collected between the period August 2016 and April 2018. Of 1,678 responses, 1,465 responses were validated after coding. Of 1,465 responses that were validated, 1,126 responses were found reliable.Findings“Cause-related marketing” and “social group endorsement” activities of the firms tend to create a brand image. To find out which of the above activities highly influence the brands of faith, realistic-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out. ROC curves were drawn to assess the brands of faith centroid values with social group endorsement and cause-related marketing variables. ROC curves explored the precision of diagnostic tests and were used to find the best “cut-off” value for impressive and unimpressive cluster test results.Research limitations/implicationsCultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation are influencing the brands of faith. The followers of the spiritual foundation have their own distinct culture, and their social affinity values increase the brands of faith. Social group endorsement and cause-related marketing are the marketing strategies suitable for spiritual foundation (to market their product/ service). Age, education and occupation are demographic values that influence the brands of faith. The spiritual foundations are segmenting their customers based on the occupational values, and they use the cause-related marketing strategies to increase the values of brands of faith.Practical implicationsAs the cultural values related to the art of living have been recognized by society as the measure of social well-being, the spiritual leaders can enhance their brands of faith. The social media communication about cause-related marketing can create trust in society. On the other hand, societal marketing activities cannot target the entire society. Hence, it is to be stratified. While stratifying, the players of diversity markets have to target a group based on the values generated by the stakeholders in the foundation. The diversified markets created by the Indian spiritual gurus are providing cultural diversity.Social implicationsThe business value created by spiritual foundations is increasing the social values which are essential to uplift society. The author concludes that if business values and societal values are integrated by any group of people, it improves economic value to that society and they can use the social currency in the form of “brands of faith”.Originality/valueThe cultural values of a society are measured and compared with national and global index. The enumerate method is an original one.