Recent year, social media has act as a very popular role for people to receive or search information, which .provides an important channel for customers’ exchange their views and experiences of consuming the product or interact with the brand. Theses online discussion could be viewed as electronic word-of-mouth. Because these online discussions poses with an “instant, flexibility, timeless, and convenience” attributes that more and more people prefer to use social media instead of traditional word-of-mouth to refer or gathering the information of the product that they are interested in buying, especially in consumer electronic product.

However, green product is varying from consumer electronic product that usually can be introduced with a very clear and understandable specification. Most of the green product poses with very specific or professional term which most of the consumer are unable to understand it. Consumers have to spend more effort and need more information and to understand the product. Thus, it is of interest for the green product producer to examine the impact of e-word of mouth on the customer’s purchase intention.

Previous research claimed that in order to examine electronic word-of-mouth adoption, it is important to verify electronic word-of-mouth credibility (argument strength, confirmation of prior belief). However, this study argued that for the product like green product which can not be clearly specified by product specification, the concept of third-party certification and recommendation comprehensiveness may play a role, which is seldom discussed in previous literature in the judgment of electronic word-of-mouth credibility. In addition, this study also try to examines the moderating effect of individual personality characteristics (Cosmopolitanism and Environmental Consciousness), which is also seldom discussed in the existing literature.

The current study builds a framework to model the effect of electronic word-of-mouth credibility, adoption on consumers’ purchase intention and an online survey is conducted. The estimation of the model showed that confirmation of prior belief, recommendation comprehensiveness and third-party certification are all represent positive relationship with the credibility of electronic word-of-mouth. Furthermore, the result also reveals that the cosmopolitan has significant negative moderating effect on the impact of electronic word-of-mouth credibility to adoption.

Recent year, social media has act as a very popular role for people to receive or search information, which .provides an important channel for customers’ exchange their views and experiences of consuming the product or interact with the brand. Theses online discussion could be viewed as electronic word-of-mouth. Because these online discussions poses with an “instant, flexibility, timeless, and convenience” attributes that more and more people prefer to use social media instead of traditional word-of-mouth to refer or gathering the information of the product that they are interested in buying, especially in consumer electronic product.

However, green product is varying from consumer electronic product that usually can be introduced with a very clear and understandable specification. Most of the green product poses with very specific or professional term which most of the consumer are unable to understand it. Consumers have to spend more effort and need more information and to understand the product. Thus, it is of interest for the green product producer to examine the impact of e-word of mouth on the customer’s purchase intention.

Previous research claimed that in order to examine electronic word-of-mouth adoption, it is important to verify electronic word-of-mouth credibility (argument strength, confirmation of prior belief). However, this study argued that for the product like green product which can not be clearly specified by product specification, the concept of third-party certification and recommendation comprehensiveness may play a role, which is seldom discussed in previous literature in the judgment of electronic word-of-mouth credibility. In addition, this study also try to examines the moderating effect of individual personality characteristics (Cosmopolitanism and Environmental Consciousness), which is also seldom discussed in the existing literature.

The current study builds a framework to model the effect of electronic word-of-mouth credibility, adoption on consumers’ purchase intention and an online survey is conducted. The estimation of the model showed that confirmation of prior belief, recommendation comprehensiveness and third-party certification are all represent positive relationship with the credibility of electronic word-of-mouth. Furthermore, the result also reveals that the cosmopolitan has significant negative moderating effect on the impact of electronic word-of-mouth credibility to adoption.

Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 Research Background 1
1.2 Research Motivation 2
1.3 Research Purpose 4
1.4 Research Question 5
Chapter 2 Literature Review 6
2.1. Purchase Intention 6
2.2. Credibility of Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) 8
2.3. Personality Characteristic 13
2.4. External Factors 16
Chapter 3: Research Framework 20
3.1. Theoretical Framework 20
3.2. Research Hypothesis 21
3.3. Measurements Design 32
3.4. Data Collection 53
3.5. Statistical Methods 54
Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Research Results 56
4.1. Descriptive Statistic Analysis 56
4.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) 65
4.3. Structural Equation Models 72
4.4. Moderating Effects 80
Chapter 5: Discussion and Further Research 84
5.1. Conclusions and Managerial Implication 84
5.2. Research Limitation and Further Research 86
Reference 88
Appendix 98

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