Title: Gender differences in consumers' word-of-mouth willingness in social networks: a moderated mediation model

Authors: Yan Li; Ziwei Wang

Addresses: College of Business Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business, No. 121 Zhangjialukou Road, Fengtai District, Beijing 100070, China ' College of Business Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business, No. 121 Zhangjialukou Road, Fengtai District, Beijing 100070, China

Abstract: This paper investigates the influence of gender on consumers' positive word-of-mouth willingness in social networks by conducting two different studies. In study 1, participants completed a questionnaire including the items of self-construal and word-of-mouth willingness. The results indicate that females prefer to generate more word-of-mouth in social networks than males. In addition, the level of self-construal fully mediates the relationship between gender and word-of-mouth willingness. The results of study 2 show that the role of scarcity as a moderator can affect the relationship between gender and word-of-mouth willingness. It moderates the relationship in such a way that when the offering is in a high level of scarcity (comparing to a low level), the gender differences of word-of-mouth would increase. Results also show that self-construal is a moderated mediator that as the offering's scarcity increased, the mediating effect of self-construal between gender and word-of-mouth willingness would be decreased.

Keywords: gender; self-construal; social network; word-of-mouth generation; scarcity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOI.2018.094672

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics, 2018 Vol.9 No.3, pp.252 - 264

Received: 09 Dec 2017
Accepted: 07 Feb 2018
Published online: 11 Sep 2018 *

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