An empirical study on effects of electronic word-of-mouth and Internet risk avoidance on purchase intention: from the perspective of big data

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of the usefulness of E-word-of-mouth (eWOM) and Internet risk avoidance on consumers’ purchase intention. In particular, because consumers typically exhibit gender difference in their purchase intentions, this study adopted a quasi-experimental design and developed four situational questionnaires on gender difference. The objective of this study was to understand the influence of related factors on consumers’ hotel reservation intention. A total of 512 effective data were collected via online questionnaires. The results showed that eWOM and Internet risk avoidance were significantly and positively correlated with consumers’ purchase intention, and eWOM had higher predictive power than Internet risk avoidance did. The results reveal that both male and female respondents emphasized hotel facilities, and their purchase intention was positively influenced by related positive comments. However, female respondents paid more attention to hotel service quality than male respondents did.