Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 
H2a:
Exposed to non-diagnostic traveler reviews, consumers with an established pre-decisional disposition are 
likely to form an evaluation of traveler reviews biased toward the direction of their pre-decisional disposition. 
It is also possible that there are consumers who are yet to acquire sufficient information to form a 
hypothesis before access to online traveler reviews. Consequently, the incoming new information serves to form 
(rather than test) a hypothesis. In this situation, especially when the new information is non-diagnostic, consumers 
are susceptible to 
negativity bias
, the tendency to overweigh negatively valenced messages (Willemsen & Keren, 
2004). Negativity bias is the notion that extreme and negative information is given more weight in evaluations of 
combination of outcomes (Lynch, 1979). It is believed that negative information produces more cognitive activity 
than positive information (see Peeters & Czapinski [1990] for a reviews). In face of non-diagnostic messages from 
other travelers, a consumer may give more weight to negative messages and less weight to positive comments, such 
disproportional allocation of weight for negative comments is likely to produce a biased hypothesis, namely, a bias 
towards negative information. The hypothesis is summarized as follows:
 

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