Cognitive dissonance, social comparison, and disseminating untruthful or negative truthful eWOM messages

In this research we explored consumers’ intentions to provide untruthful or negative truthful electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) messages when undergoing conflicting cognitive dissonance and after experiencing social comparison. We recruited 480 Taiwanese Internet users to participate in a scenario-based experiment. The findings show that after making downward comparisons on the Internet, consumers with high cognitive dissonance were more inclined to disseminate negative truthful eWOM messages compared to consumers with low cognitive dissonance. After making upward comparisons, it was found that consumers with high cognitive dissonance were more likely to make untruthful eWOM statements compared to those with low cognitive dissonance. It is recommended that marketers monitor eWOM in an effort to reduce the incidence of consumers’ negative truthful and untruthful eWOM messages.