Our study seeks to explain bystander inaction by guiding the regulation of delegitimizing doxing. We develop a contextualized research model by integrating attitudinal ambivalence theory and general deterrence theory. Our results innovatively uncover three congruence effects describing how positive and negative appraisals are combined to determine bystander inaction. Moreover, perceived SNS deterrence weakens the negative impact of attitudinal univalence on bystander inaction. As one of the pioneering empirical inquiries into delegitimizing doxing, our study contributes to theory and practice related to bystander intervention in delegitimizing doxing.

Knowledge withholding, which is defined as the likelihood that an individual devotes less than full effort to knowledge contribution, can be regarded as an emerging social deviance behavior for knowledge practice in online knowledge spaces. However, prior studies placed a great emphasis on proactive knowledge behaviors, such as knowledge sharing and contribution, but failed to consider the uniqueness of knowledge withholding. To capture the social‐deviant nature of knowledge withholding and to better understand how people deal with counterproductive knowledge behaviors, this study develops a research model based on the secondary control perspective. Empirical analyses were conducted using the data collected from an online knowledge space. The results indicate that both predictive control and vicarious control exert a positive influence on knowledge withholding. This study also incorporates knowledge‐withholding acceptability as a moderating variable of secondary control strategies. In particular, knowledge‐withholding acceptability enhances the impact of predictive control, whereas it weakens the effect of vicarious control on knowledge withholding. This study concludes with a discussion of the key findings, and the implications for both research and practice.

To advance the theoretical understanding on information adoption, this study tries to extend the information adoption model (IAM) in three ways. First, this study considers the relationship between source credibility and argument quality and the relationship between herding factors and information usefulness (i.e., bias effects). Second, this study proposes the interaction effects of source credibility and argument quality and the interaction effects of herding factors and information usefulness (i.e., synergistic effects). Third, this study explores the moderating role of an information characteristic – search versus experience information (i.e., information contingency effects). The proposed extended information adoption model (EIAM) is empirically tested through a 2 by 2 by 2 experiment in the social Q&A context, and the results confirm most of the hypotheses. Finally, theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

It has been demonstrated that online consumer reviews are an important source of information that affect individuals’ purchase decision making. To understand the influence of online reviews, this study extends prior research on information adoption by incorporating the perspective of herd behavior. We develop and empirically test a research model using data collected from an existing book review site. We report 2 major findings. First, argument quality and source credibility predict information usefulness, which affects the adoption of online reviews. Second, we determine that the adoption of online reviews is also influenced by 2 herd factors, namely, discounting own information and imitating others. We further identify the key determinants of these herd factors, including background homophily and attitude homophily. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.