Honesty is the best policy: The effects of disclosure in word-of-mouth marketing

Assessment of Preschool's Inclusive Participation in Social Responsibility Program Under Institutional Pressure: Evidence From China

China set the goal of expanding early childhood education (ECE) in 2018, by encouraging the development of public interest kindergartens (PIK) to provide high-quality, low-cost preschool services to the general public. This is in response to the challenges of accessibility, affordability, and accountability besetting China’s current ECE system. However, the transition toward PIK has been slow due to various complex problems, including the lackluster willingness of ECE providers to become PIK. To better understand the challenges leading to low participation, this study explores the external pressures affecting ECE providers and evaluates the external factors that influence their level of social responsibility. A stratified-random sampling questionnaire survey solicited responses from 832 ECE personnel representing 261 kindergartens from across China. Our findings suggest that institutional pressure has a positive effect on social responsibility and inclusive participation. We also found that institution visibility positively regulates the relationship between institutional pressure and social responsibility. At the same time, the level of environmental perception positively governs the relationship between social responsibility and participation willingness. Kindergartens should have certain social values, including assuming certain behaviors and participating in social activities in the spirit of social service and ensure multiple subjects’ synergetic governance.

Effects of Sponsorship Disclosure on Perceived Integrity of Biased Recommendation Agents: Psychological Contract Violation and Knowledge-Based Trust Perspectives

Product recommendation agents (RAs) are widely employed by online merchants to facilitate consumers’ decision making. Users’ perceived integrity of these RAs becomes a critical trust concern when RAs apply sponsorship practices and recommend products biased toward sponsored products. Sponsorship disclosure is enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, but many technologies fail to comply probably because of their concerns on users’ trust in the biased technologies. This research investigate when sponsorship disclosure is most effective in enhancing users’ perceived RA integrity. A laboratory experiment revealed two major findings related to the benefits of sponsorship disclosure in enhancing users’ perceived integrity of a biased RA. First, for users with high prior knowledge about the prevalence of sponsorships used by RAs in general, sponsorship disclosure can reduce users’ perceived psychological contract violations of a biased RA and then increase users’ perceived RA integrity. For users with limited such prior knowledge, the disclosure fails to reduce these perceived violations. Second, regardless of the level of such prior knowledge of users, sponsorship disclosure enhances users’ perceived transparency of a biased RA, which, in turn, leads to perceived RA integrity.