Credibility

About: Credibility is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 13730 publications have been published within this topic receiving 331944 citations. The topic is also known as: believability & plausibility.

Internet Auction Features as Quality Signals.

Abstract: Internet auction companies have developed innovative tools that enable sellers to reveal more information about their credibility and product quality to avoid the “lemons” problem. On the basis of signaling and auction theories, the authors propose a typology of Internet auction quality and credibility indicators, adopt and modify Park and Bradlow’s (2005) model, and use eBay as an example to examine empirically how different types of indicators help alleviate uncertainty. This empirical evidence demonstrates how Internet auction features affect consumer participation and bidding decisions, what modifies the credibility of quality indicators, and how different buyers react to indicators. The signaling-based hypotheses provide coherent explanations of consumers’ bidding behavior. As the first empirical study to evaluate the signaling role of comprehensive Internet auction institutional features in mitigating the adverse selection problem, this research provides evidence to clarify the economic foundation behind innovative Internet auction designs.

Greener and cleaner: the signaling accuracy of U.S. voluntary environmental programs

Abstract: Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) have become a popular alternative to traditional regulation. However, little is known about whether these programs are sending accurate signals about the environmental practices of their participants. As a means for understanding signaling accuracy, this research investigates VEP design characteristics. The findings suggest that there are four distinct types of programs with varying degrees of rigor. Because information for differentiating among program types is limited, less rigorous VEPs can signal that their administrative, environmental performance and conformance requirements are comparable to programs with more robust designs. Further, the lack of monitoring and sanctions in less rigorous programs create opportunities for participants to free-ride and receive benefits without satisfying VEP requirements. Unless some means of distinguishing among program types is implemented, these issues can threaten the long term viability of VEPs as a tool for environmental protection, and the credibility of market mechanisms more broadly.

To Tweet or to Retweet? That Is the Question for Health Professionals on Twitter

Abstract: Guided by the MAIN model (Sundar, 2008), this study explored the effects of three interface cues conveying source attributes on credibility of health messages in Twitter: authority cue (whether a source is an expert or not), bandwagon cue (the number of followers that a source has—large vs small), and source proximity cue (distance of messages from its original source—tweet vs retweet) A significant three-way interaction effect on perceived credibility of health content was found, such that when a professional source with many followers tweets, participants tend to perceive the content to be more credible than when a layperson source with many followers tweets For retweets, however, the exact opposite pattern was found Results also show that for tweets, content credibility was significantly associated with the perceived expertise of proximal source, whereas for retweets, it was associated with the perceived trustworthiness of proximal source Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Political psychology or politicized psychology: Is the road to scientific hell paved with good moral intentions?

Abstract: This article proceeds from the premise that a completely value-neutral political psychology is impossible. Testing hypotheses about the efficacy of deterrence or the pervasiveness of racism or the quality of decision making inevitably requires value-charged trade-offs between Type I errors (rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true) and Type II errors (failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false). The article goes on, however, to argue that our collective credibility as a science depends on self-critical efforts to monitor and minimize the influence of scientifically irrelevant values on inquiry. I identify two examples of research programs-White's work on deterrence and the Sears and Kinder work on symbolic racism-in which the moral-political values of the investigators appear to have profoundly shaped standards of evidence and proof in testing competing hypotheses. I also identify logical and empirical strategies that investigators can use to check the influence of extraneous values. These strategies include rigorous skepticism toward counterfactuals that underlie causal claims in historical analyses, embedding of experimental manipulations in representative sample surveys to isolate determinants of public opinion, developing methods to translate case studies into standardized data languages so that we can more readily identify potential sources of bias, and continual open-mindedness to the possibility that patterns of thinking that scholarly observers laud as cognitively or morally superior in one set of political settings may look quite maladaptive or immoral in other political settings. The article closes with a transparently valueladen appeal to preserve the autonomy of political psychology as a science by distinguishing sharply between when we speak for a scientific discipline and when we speak as concerned citizens.