Web Credibility

Danielson, David R.

doi:10.4018/978-1-59140-562-7.ch107

Cited by 32 publications

(28 citation statements)

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“…However, judgments during online information retrieval differ from other contexts such as traditional media (Danielson, 2005;Sohn et al, 2002). Hence, this article focuses on literature specific to information judgments on the Internet, where scholars identify different judgment criteria that encompass information quality, credibility, and cognitive authority (Rieh & Danielson, 2007).…”

Section: Information Judgments On the Internetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doctors' online information needs, cognitive search strategies, and judgments of information quality and cognitive authority: How predictive judgments introduce bias into cognitive search models

Hughes

Wareham

Joshi³

2009

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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Literature examining information judgments and Internet search behaviors notes a number of major research gaps, including how users actually make these judgments outside of experiments or researcher-defined tasks, and how search behavior is impacted by a user's judgment of online information. Using the medical setting, where doctors face real consequences in applying the information found, we examine how information judgments employed by doctors to mitigate risk impact their cognitive search. Diaries encompassing 444 real clinical information search incidents, combined with semistructured interviews across 35 doctors, were analyzed via thematic analysis. Results show that doctors, though aware of the need for information quality and cognitive authority, rarely make evaluative judgments. This is explained by navigational bias in information searches and via predictive judgments that favor known sites where doctors perceive levels of information quality and cognitive authority. Doctors' mental models of the Internet sites and Web experience relevant to the task type enable these predictive judgments. These results suggest a model connecting online cognitive search and information judgment literatures. Moreover, this implies a need to understand cognitive search through longitudinalor learning-based views for repeated search tasks, and Received June 13, 2009; revised August 12, 2009; accepted September 3, 2009 Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article. IntroductionInformation search is a process by which a person seeks knowledge about a problem or situation, constituting a major activity by the Internet's millions of users (Browne, Pitts, & Wetherbe, 2007). The Web is now a primary source of information for many people, driving a critical need to understand how users search or employ search engines (Jansen & Spink, 2006). Extensive literature examines not only behavioral models detailing the different moves or tactics during Internet search but also decision making or strategies described as cognitive search models (Navarro-Prieto, Scaife, & Rogers, 1999;Thatcher, 2006Thatcher, , 2008. The latter examines the cognitive aspects of the moves users employ to optimize their search performance, exploring elements such as expertnovice differences or judgments on when to terminate the search (e.g., Thatcher, 2006Thatcher, , 2008Cothey, 2002;Jaillet, 2003;Browne et al., 2007). This notion of judgment introduces a second stream of literature, Internet information judgments, where authors note that the use of predictive information judgments impacts decision making in search, based on an anticipation of a page's value before viewing it (Rieh, 2002;Griffiths & Brophy, 2005).Cognitive search models rarely explore the impact of predictive judgments. Most studies are based on tasks defined by researchers in experimental settings that are difficult to generalize to professional contexts or real use (Thatcher, 2006; information judgments during real instances of information search and...

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Section: Information Judgments On the Internetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doctors' online information needs, cognitive search strategies, and judgments of information quality and cognitive authority: How predictive judgments introduce bias into cognitive search models

Hughes

Wareham

Joshi³

2009

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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“…Yet, scholars note that digital media tools sometimes lack standard authority indicators such as author identity or reputation (Danielson, 2005;Fritch & Cromwell, 2002), and therefore source information is often unavailable, masked, or missing online. In other cases, source information is provided, but hard to interpret, such as when information is co-produced, re-purposed from one site, channel, or application to another or when information aggregators display information from multiple sources in a centralized location that may itself be perceived as the source.…”

Section: Group Identification and Information Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting with the user-generated Web: how group identification impacts online information sharing and evaluation

Flanagin

Hocevar

Samahito³

2013

Information, Communication & Society

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Online information pools, such as user-generated encyclopedias and websites that aggregate users' ratings of various products and experiences, are increasingly popular venues where people seek out and share information. While cues about the identity of information sources may be limited in these venues, they may nonetheless incite a sense of shared group membership and social identity among users. This study applies Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory to examine the effects of group identification on people's information contribution and evaluation behaviors in online information pools. Experimental results indicate that shared group identification positively influences motivation, which in turn influences contribution to information pools. Additionally, people tend to find information contributed by similar others to be more credible and they are also more likely to indicate that they will act on this information. The implications of these findings on the sustenance of information pools, and for information sharing in the contemporary media environment more broadly, are discussed.

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“…For instance, customers often buy products directly from web-based businesses without the aid of sales clerks or agents who might help them navigate the complexities of the consumer landscape. Accordingly, several scholars have noted the enhanced need for effective evaluation of information sources [23,39,67,81], and the variety of contexts of information assessment. The credibility of information sources is no longer necessarily a function of sustained, face-to-face interaction, nor is it established solely through the endorsement of those whom one knows personally or directly.…”

Section: The Role Of Risk and Information Seeking In Consumer Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating risk in ecommerce transactions: perceptions of information credibility and the role of user-generated ratings in product quality and purchase intention

Flanagin

Metzger

Pure

et al. 2014

Electron Commer Res

214

116

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Although extremely popular, electronic commerce environments often lack information that has traditionally served to ensure trust among exchange partners. Digital technologies, however, have created new forms of "electronic word-of-mouth," which offer new potential for gathering credible information that guides consumer behaviors. We conducted a nationally representative survey and a focused experiment to assess how individuals perceive the credibility of online commercial information, particularly as compared to information available through more traditional channels, and to evaluate the specific aspects of ratings information that affect people's attitudes toward ecommerce. Survey results show that consumers rely heavily on web-based information as compared to other channels, and that ratings information is critical in the evaluation of the credibility of online commercial information. Experimental results indicate that ratings are positively associated with perceptions of product quality and purchase intention, but that people attend to average product ratings, but not to the number of ratings or to the combination of the average and the number of ratings together. Thus suggests that in spite of valuing the web and ratings as sources of commercial information, people use ratings information suboptimally by potentially privileging small numbers of ratings that could be idiosyncratic. In addition, product quality is shown to mediate the relationship between user ratings and purchase intention. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are considered for ecommerce scholars, consumers, and vendors.Keywords Ecommerce · Credibility · User-generated content · Amazon · Product ratings · Electronic word of mouth · Information credibility · Purchase intention · Product quality · User ratings People are increasingly relying on web-based commercial information for electronic commerce ("ecommerce") transactions that range from small personal items to home purchases [45]. Retail ecommerce sales in the U.S. currently constitute roughly 4 % of total retail sales, which translates to almost 40 billion dollars annually [10]. The number of Americans who have purchased a product online has steadily increased since 2000, and a majority (66 %) now report having made at least one online purchase [46]. An even larger percentage (93 %) has used the Internet for ecommerce-related activities, including researching information about a product they are thinking of buying, with more than a quarter of Americans reporting they do this on a daily basis [49]. In fact, over the last decade the number of people either researching or buying a product or service online has nearly doubled, a trend that holds true across a wide range of ecommerce-related activities [45].Despite its popularity, online commercial transactions often lack elements that have traditionally served to ensure trust and credibility among exchange parties. Indeed, varying "patronage modes" embody different levels of risk for the consumer, which incr...

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Web Credibility

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

Doctors' online information needs, cognitive search strategies, and judgments of information quality and cognitive authority: How predictive judgments introduce bias into cognitive search models

Doctors' online information needs, cognitive search strategies, and judgments of information quality and cognitive authority: How predictive judgments introduce bias into cognitive search models

Connecting with the user-generated Web: how group identification impacts online information sharing and evaluation

Mitigating risk in ecommerce transactions: perceptions of information credibility and the role of user-generated ratings in product quality and purchase intention

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