Effects of Online Crowds on Self-Disclosure Behaviors in Online Reviews: A Multidimensional Examination

ABSTRACT

In online environments (i.e., product review sites in our case), consumers are increasingly interacting and socializing with many “strangers” (i.e., online crowds) as well as sharing personal and product information. Drawing from social norms theory, we examine how the multiple aspects of online crowds affect their self-disclosure behaviors as they provide online reviews and investigate the extent to which prior experience moderates this relationship. Our analysis of data from a leading apparel rental site in the United States uncovers that individuals are inclined to conform to the self-disclosure behaviors of a crowd and divulge more personal information as self-disclosure variance within the group increases. Conversely, individuals are more likely to conceal personal information as a review page becomes crowded. The findings reveal that a reviewer’s prior experience of writing a review on the website weakens conformity behavior and reduces the effects of crowdedness. The prior experience also positively interacts with self-disclosure variance in a crowd. Based on these results, we present theoretical implications to literature on social norms and privacy, prior experience, and online reviews. This study also has managerial implications for firms interested in content generation by online reviewers and in review systems where user-generated content is essential.

KEYWORDS:

• Online crowds
• social norms
• online self-disclosure
• online reviews
• fixed-effect two-stage least squares models

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Disclosure Statement

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

HanByeol Stella Choi

HanByeol Stella Choi ([email protected]) is a research assistant professor in Digital Innovation Research Center at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). She received her Ph.D. in Management Engineering from the College of Business at KAIST. Her research interests include business analytics, privacy, information security, and societal impacts of information systems. Dr. Choi’s research has been published in such journals as Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, and Security Journal. She has also presented her work at Hawaii International Conference in System Sciences, Conference on Information Systems and Technology, and Americas Conference on Information Systems.

Wonseok Oh

Wonseok Oh ([email protected]; corresponding author) is the KAIST C.B. Chair Professor of Information Systems in the College of Business at KAIST. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Stern School of Business at New York University. His research interests include network theory, economics of information systems, mobile app consumption, and social media. Dr. Oh’s research work has been published in Information Systems Research, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, and other journals. He is a senior editor of Information Systems Research and has served as an associate editor for MIS Quarterly.

Chanhee Kwak

Chanhee Kwak ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Data Science at Kangnam University, Korea. He received his Ph.D. in Management Engineering at KAIST. His research interests include ethical use of personal data and interpretable machine learning. Dr. Kwak’s research work has been published in academic journals including Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Information Management and Journal of Knowledge Management.

Junyeong Lee

Junyeong Lee ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in Department of Management Information Systems at the Chungbuk National University (CBNU), Korea. He received his Ph.D. in Management Engineering at the KAIST. His research interests include collective dynamics and human behavior in information systems. His work has been published in such journals as Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Information Management, and Communications of the ACM.

Heeseok Lee

Heeseok Lee ([email protected]) is a Professor of IT and Strategy of the College of Business at KAIST. He was previously Dean for the Graduate School of Information and Media Management. He received his Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Arizona. Dr. Lee’s research papers have appeared in such journals as Journal of Management Information Systems, Information and Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Computers in Human Behavior, MIS Quarterly, and others. He received the Herbert Simon Award from International Academy of Information Technology and Quantitative Management for his contribution in IT and Decision Making.