Impact of informational factors on online recommendation credibility: The moderating role of source credibility

This study investigates the moderating effect of recommendation source credibility on the causal relationships between informational factors and recommendation credibility, as well as its moderating effect on the causal relationship between recommendation credibility and recommendation adoption. Using data from 199 responses from a leading online consumer discussion forum in China, we find that recommendation source credibility significantly moderates two informational factors' effects on readers' perception of recommendation credibility, each in a different direction. Further, we find that source credibility negatively moderates the effect of recommendation credibility on recommendation adoption. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.