published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

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Word of mouth (WOM) – or information shared among consumers themselves – has long been regarded as one of the most influential information sources for consumers (Brown and Reingen 1987). Unlike offline word of mouth, which typically occurs among people who know each other, online word of mouth typically occurs among strangers who do not know, and are unlikely to ever know, one other. While it is reasonable to assume that social concerns, such as maintaining relationships, are likely to influence people’s offline word of mouth behavior among familiar others, it is unclear whether social concerns dictate people’s online word of mouth behavior. In my dissertation, I look at how social considerations – thoughts about other people – affect people’s online word of mouth behavior. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I examine how people’s choice of word of mouth topic online is influenced by social considerations. Specifically, I find that while people enjoy talking about controversial topics because the topics are intrinsically interesting, people often times avoid these topics because they fear social rejection by their conversation partner. In chapter three, I examine how reviewers’ desire to appear logical (vs. imaginative) during word of mouth transmission affects their memory for the experience. I find that attempting to be logical negatively affects reviewer’s memory and this is due to the logic mindset activating verbal instead of perceptual processes during subsequent recall. In other words, impression management goals (e.g., to present oneself as a rational person) during word of mouth communication may be detrimental for people’s memory . Chapter four examines how consumer evaluations of reviews are driven by consumer beliefs about why reviews are written. I find that, in general, consumers tend to discount positive reviews because they think positive reviews are written for reviewer-specific reason such a self-enhancement or signaling expertise. When temporal contiguity cues – words and phrases indicating that the review was written immediately after the consumption experience – are present, however, people tend to give more credence to positive reviews because these cues make consumers think that the product experience, rather than reviewer-specific goals, precipitated the writing of the review. Taken together, my dissertation shows that social considerations affect both the transmission of word of mouth and the reception of online word of mouth. More generally, my dissertation showcases how thoughts about others (e.g., will others be offended?) influence consumer behavior even in situations where present and future social interactions are unlikely to occur.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-97). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-79) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-105).

abstract: Predicting when an individual will adopt a new behavior is an important problem in application domains such as marketing and public health. This thesis examines the performance of a wide variety of social network based measurements proposed in the literature - which have not been previously compared directly. This research studies the probability of an individual becoming influenced based on measurements derived from neighborhood (i.e. number of influencers, personal network exposure), structural diversity, locality, temporal measures, cascade measures, and metadata. It also examines the ability to predict influence based on choice of the classifier and how the ratio of positive to negative samples in both training and testing affect prediction results - further enabling practical use of these concepts for social influence applications. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2016

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1937. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-90).

The current study investigated the impact of a training program on a peer-to-peer intervention designed to increase the use of bicycle helmets on a large college campus. The training program was evaluated by the number of interactions a peer change agent--an individual who attempts to make a positive change in another person's behavior, had with bicyclists. The results suggest the training program may be effective in increasing change agent interactions for change agents who are already commitment to the intervention leading to more interactions per capita between committed trained change agents and bicyclists than untrained change agent and bicyclists. However, these results must be interpreted with caution due to small and unequal sample sizes. / Master of Science

It is well documented that friends influence adaptive behaviors (Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011). However, it remains unclear how influence manifests itself. The current study investigated the role of likeability and popularity in determining the relative influence that a child exercises on his or her friend’s prosocial behavior and academic achievement in a sample of elementary schooled children (N=679). The results suggest that more liked friends have more influence over their less liked friends’ prosocial behavior and academic achievement. Both more- and less-popular friends influenced each other’s academic achievement. Residualized analyses, however, which take into account the shared overlap between likeability and popularity, suggest that the more-liked friend continued to influence the prosocial behavior and academic achievement of the less-liked friend, whereas more-popular children had no influence over their less-popular counterparts. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection