The Effect of Disease Salience on Preference for eWOM in Social Media

Abstract

This article examines how disease salience influences users’ preference for eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth) in social media. Merging insights from the behavioral immune system (BIS) with research on eWOM, we predict that infectious disease salience decreases preference for news with high (vs. low) eWOM volume. Specifically, exposure to infectious disease cues lowers readers’ intention to consume the news with high (vs. low) eWOM volume. Infectious disease salience will activate BIS and disease-avoidance motive, which will decrease their preference for people-related objects. Since high eWOM volume is implicitly associated with many people, it misaligns with the avoidance motive. Our preliminary results support most of our predictions. The findings advance fundamental knowledge of the evolutionary strategies guiding disease avoidance and document how strategies can affect users’ social media behavior.