Judging the Wrongness of Firms in Social Media Firestorms: The Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing Perspective

Social media firestorms pose a significant challenge for firms in the digital age. Tacklingfirestorms isdifficult because the judgmentsand responses from social media users are influenced by not only the nature of the transgressions but also by thereactions and opinions ofother social media users. Drawing onthe heuristic-systematic information processing model,weproposeda research model to explainthe effects of social impact (the heuristicmode) and argument quality and moral intensity (the systematic mode) on firm wrongness (thejudgment outcome) as well as the effectsof firm wrongness on vindictive complaining and patronage reduction.We adopted mixed methods in our investigation,includinga survey,an experiment, and a focus group study. Our findingsshow that theheuristic and systematic modesof information processing exert both direct and interaction effects on individuals’ judgment. Specifically,the heuristic mode of information process dominates overall and alsobiases the systematic mode. Our study advancesthe literatureby offering an alternative explanation forthe emergence of social media firestorms and identifyinganovel context in which the heuristic mode dominatesin dualinformation processing. Italso shedslight onthe formulation of response strategies to mitigate the adverseimpacts resultingfrom social media firestorms. We conclude our paper with limitations and future research directions.