UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item ESSAYS ON THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH DYNAMICS ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR(2022) Zhao, Xindi; Trusov, Michael; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recognizing the importance of product reviews for product sales in online retail platforms, this dissertation studies the effect of electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) dynamics on consumer behavior, including information processing, review-reading behavior, product evaluation, purchase decision, and reviewing behavior. In the first essay, I focus on incentivized reviews, which are posted by reviewers who received economic incentives (e.g., free product) from the firm, and explore how their emergence in a reviewing system influences subsequent organic (i.e., nonincentivized) review contributions for the focal product. I find that the ratings of subsequent organic reviews decrease after the appearance of incentivized reviews and that the magnitude of this negative impact decreases over time and the ratings recover in the long run. This is because subsequent reviewers adjust their product evaluations downwards when faced with priorincentivized reviews. In the second essay, I study the effect of a prevalence phenomenon— repetition in e-WOM—on consumer behavior. I demonstrate that high repetition in e-WOM could have a negative effect on persuasion and that this negative effect could be eliminated by modifying consumers’ inferences about the cause of repetition. Furthermore, consumers’ information-seeking behaviors are also affected by the share and type of repetition. Both essays provide an understanding of the impact of e-WOM on consumers’ judgments and decisions and offer implications for firms and platforms on how to gather, manage, and display e-WOM effectively; they also provide interesting avenues for future research.Item ESSAYS ABOUT THE ELECTRICITY SECTOR IN CHINA(2019) Que, Guanghui; Alberini, Anna; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)China, with the largest electricity consumption market in the world, is in the process of market-oriented reform on its electricity industry and trying to encourage energy saving and enhance energy efficiency by implementing nonlinear pricing mechanisms. This thesis broadly investigates such policies through three related essays. The first essay investigates how Chinese households have responded to new nonlinear pricing schemes and estimates the price and income elasticities of demand. I use three complementary approaches. Based on an extensive household-level administrative dataset, I first perform a bunching test to see if consumers appear to be responding to non-linear pricing. Second, I estimate a double-log demand function using household-level consumption data during peak and off-peak time. I use instrumental variable techniques to address issues of endogeneity. Third, using survey data with extensive information about the stock of energy-using durables owned by households, combined with monthly usage records, I fit a structural model that includes time-of-use and increasing block rates pricing. I find evidence of remarkable heterogeneity in the price and income elasticities, depending on the stock of appliances, income level, and total electricity consumption. This provides support for the notion that increasing block rates give stronger incentives to households with higher consumption levels. Policy simulations under two alternative scenarios show that households do decrease their total electricity consumption significantly when the pricing schemes change from uniform pricing to non-linear pricing such as time-of-use pricing and increasing block rates. The second essay investigates the vertical integration economies between transmission and distribution of the electricity industry. Using unique administrative cost data of 24 province utility companies in China, I first estimate a quadratic cost function. To investigate the vertical integration economies thoroughly, I define transmission and distribution based on three counterfactual scenarios, treating the 220kV and above network, 110kV and above network, 35kV and above network as transmission under the first, second, and third scenarios respectively. Then I estimate the vertical integration economies under these three scenarios. Results show that there do exist significant vertical integration economies and that the vertical integration economies have grown over time. I also find evidence of remarkable heterogeneity in the vertical integration economies. Utility companies with high consumption intensity have larger vertical integration economies. Also, vertical integration economies are larger under the first scenario than the second and third scenarios. All these results support the conclusion that currently, the separation of transmission and distribution would cause significant cost increase, which will be transferred to end consumers. The third essay investigates how stock prices of generation companies and major industrial electricity users react to the electricity on-grid and retail tariff adjustments and announcements of future market-oriented reform plans in China using the event-study method. Attention is restricted to publicly listed generation companies and major industrial electricity users. Using two different windows periods (5 business days before and after the events, the short-term, and 10 business days before and after the events, the mid-term), I find that stock prices do not respond significantly to the announced future reform plans. This may betray the consumer’s belief that future reform plans will not be implemented effectively and thoroughly in China. By contrast, the stock prices of generation companies and major electricity consumers do react significantly and negatively to tariff adjustments in both the short- and the mid-term.Item ASSESSING QUALITY IN HIGH-UNCERTAINTY MARKETS: ONLINE REVIEWS OF CREDENCE SERVICES(2016) Lantzy, Shannon; Stewart, Katherine; Viswanathan, Siva; Business and Management: Decision & Information Technologies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In economics of information theory, credence products are those whose quality is difficult or impossible for consumers to assess, even after they have consumed the product (Darby & Karni, 1973). This dissertation is focused on the content, consumer perception, and power of online reviews for credence services. Economics of information theory has long assumed, without empirical confirmation, that consumers will discount the credibility of claims about credence quality attributes. The same theories predict that because credence services are by definition obscure to the consumer, reviews of credence services are incapable of signaling quality. Our research aims to question these assumptions. In the first essay we examine how the content and structure of online reviews of credence services systematically differ from the content and structure of reviews of experience services and how consumers judge these differences. We have found that online reviews of credence services have either less important or less credible content than reviews of experience services and that consumers do discount the credibility of credence claims. However, while consumers rationally discount the credibility of simple credence claims in a review, more complex argument structure and the inclusion of evidence attenuate this effect. In the second essay we ask, “Can online reviews predict the worst doctors?” We examine the power of online reviews to detect low quality, as measured by state medical board sanctions. We find that online reviews are somewhat predictive of a doctor’s suitability to practice medicine; however, not all the data are useful. Numerical or star ratings provide the strongest quality signal; user-submitted text provides some signal but is subsumed almost completely by ratings. Of the ratings variables in our dataset, we find that punctuality, rather than knowledge, is the strongest predictor of medical board sanctions. These results challenge the definition of credence products, which is a long-standing construct in economics of information theory. Our results also have implications for online review users, review platforms, and for the use of predictive modeling in the context of information systems research.Item THE INFLUENCE OF CONSUMER MOTIVATIONS ON CONSUMPTION INTENTIONS AND BEHAVIOR(2009) Espinoza, Francine; Hamilton, Rebecca W; Srivastava, Joydeep; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This Dissertation comprises two essays that investigate how consumers' different motivations affect their cognitive responses and consumption behavior. Essay 1 shows that consumers' motivation to rely on their own opinion and correct their judgments for the influence of a product recommendation moderates source credibility effects on judgment certainty and behavioral intentions. Building upon earlier research showing that correction may decrease judgment certainty, we propose that, contrary to this unidirectional effect, correction has an asymmetric effect on judgment certainty and behavioral intentions, depending on the initial recommendation credibility. In a series of three studies, we provide support for the asymmetric effect of correction and show that when consumers correct for the influence of a high credibility recommendation, their judgment certainty and behavioral intentions decrease, but when they correct for the influence of a low credibility recommendation, their judgment certainty and behavioral intentions increase. Essay 2 examines the influence of consumers' motivations on product valuation and proposes that while buyers are intrinsically motivated to minimize what they are giving up, sellers are intrinsically motivated to maximize what they are getting. These differential goals lead to a discrepancy in product valuation of buyers relative to sellers. In a series of five studies, we provide support for the motivated valuation explanation for the disparity between buying and selling prices and show that when the goal pursuit of buyers and sellers is altered, buyers may be willing to buy for a higher price and sellers may be willing to buy for a lower price.Item Investigating the Role of Personality in (Sport) Consumer Behavior(2008-11-17) Mahan III, Joseph Edward; McDaniel, Stephen R; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is presented as three empirical investigations examining the state of personality research in consumer behavior (CB). Each study supports the notion that the use of established personality theory can serve to better inform CB research (e.g., Baumgartner, 2002). Study one builds upon previous research in evaluating and comparing the validity and reliability of the Impulsive Sensation Seeking (ImpSS) scale with the more established Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V (SSS-V) and a third measure of Optimum Stimulation Level (OSL) in both homogenous and heterogeneous samples. Findings suggest ImpSS to be a valid and reliable alternative to SSS-V. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) results point to concurrent validity of ImpSS and SSS-V. In addition, the predictive validity of ImpSS compares favorably to both SSS-V and CSI in the context of high-risk behavioral correlates (i.e., gambling, smoking, and drinking). Consumer use of imagery to process advertising messages has received much attention in the literature (e.g., Thompson and Hamilton 2006) yet little is known about its underlying structure. Study two adopts a hierarchical personality approach (cf. Mowen and Spears 1999) in examining the influence of certain traits on an individual's processing style. Results suggest that variance in preferences for a visual processing style may be explained by interplay among some higher-order personality traits (i.e., Openness to Experience and fantasy-proneness) but not others (i.e., ImpSS). The findings of study two also provide a platform for the third investigation by demonstrating that a theoretically-grounded personality trait (i.e., fantasy proneness) appears to play a role in mode of processing. The third study examines the role of personality in the imagery processing of sport marketing stimuli. Specifically, this investigation explores the effects of fantasy proneness on processing and response to print ads containing varying levels of sport-related imagery. While the research hypotheses are not supported, this study follows existing imagery-processing literature (e.g., Petrova & Cialdini, 2005) in that manipulation of imagery-eliciting ad elements (i.e., ad copy) can lead to increased processing and more favorable ad response. Results of post hoc regression analyses also imply that fantasy proneness may, in fact, play a small role in consumer processing.