How Online Incivility Affects Consumer Engagement Behavior on Brands’ Social Media
研究发现品牌社交媒体上消费者之间的不文明互动会短期增加受害者的参与度，但长期会降低；品牌回应能缓解部分负面影响，但来自品牌拥护者的不文明行为即使有品牌回应也会导致受害者被排斥。
Research on consumer engagement in social media is flourishing. However, online incivility is rampant and its effect on consumer engagement is unknown. The current work posits long-term consumer engagement with a brand is decreased when consumer-to-consumer uncivil interactions take place on brands’ social media channels. Using behavioral data from Facebook, the first study documents that a consumer’s incivility to another consumer increases the victim’s engagement in the short term but decreases their engagement over the long term. Further, a brand’s response mitigates these effects. Two follow-up studies using scenario-based experiments provide evidence that consumer injustice perceptions mediate a confrontation coping strategy, while ostracism perceptions mediate an avoidance coping strategy. The experiments also evidence that a brand response mitigates some of the effects of incivility. However, an uncivil interaction from a brand advocate can ostracize a victim despite a brand response. Together, our work furthers consumer engagement and consumer incivility theory while also suggesting that practitioners should manage incivility on brands’ social media pages.