Impact of Congruence Between Self-disclosed Personal Information and Review on Source Credibility in Online Travel Reviews (open access)

Impact of Congruence Between Self-disclosed Personal Information and Review on Source Credibility in Online Travel Reviews

This experimental study examined the source-message congruence effect on source credibility by manipulating the congruence of the reviewer’s profile information (travel interest, geographical location) with no changes in the review content. the congruence effect was found to influence perceptions of the reviewer’s expertise in a travel interest. This finding suggests that revealing the reviewer’s travel interest can assist the credibility assessment of travel reviewers-particularly in terms of expertise-within the category of a travel interest. the refined classification of travel reviewers based on their travel interests can improve their usefulness as information sources for prospective travelers’ information searches. These attributes can further be employed as search cues if embedded in the reviewer’s profile.
Date: May 2012
Creator: Park, Hee Lye
System: The UNT Digital Library