Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) dispersion, reflecting the extent of reviewers’ opinion divergence regarding a product, determines consumer decisions. Drawing upon the endowment effect and attribution literature, this research proposes that the endowment effect mediates the influence of eWOM dispersion on attributional inferences, and the display formats of eWOM dispersion (“horizontal bar chart” vs. “eWOM content”) moderate the mediating influence of endowment effect on attributional inferences of eWOM dispersion. Three complementary studies reveal three key insights in this setting. First, when consumers already having an emotional attachment to a product and subsequently encountering dispersive eWOM, the higher the level of eWOM dispersion, the stronger the endowment effect. Secondly, In such circumstance, the stronger endowment effect promotes more reviewer-related attribution inference of high-dispersion eWOM, and the weaker endowment effect promotes more product-related attribution inference of low-dispersion eWOM. Third, the positive influence of eWOM dispersion on endowment effect is stronger for eWOM dispersion in the complexity or disfluency display format (i.e. “reviewers’ impression of product”) than for eWOM dispersion in the simply of fluency display format (i.e. “horizontal bar chart”), more importantly, the mediating influence of endowment effect on attributional inferences is moderated by the display formats of eWOM dispersion, and this findings persists even when product category (hedonic vs. utilitarian) is taken into consideration. The theoretical implications for the eWOM dispersion and attribution literature and practical implications for online retailers are discussed.

电子口碑 (eWOM) 分散度反映了评论者对产品的意见分歧程度，决定了消费者的决定。本研究借鉴禀赋效应和归因文献，提出禀赋效应在网络口碑分散对归因推断的影响中起中介作用，网络口碑分散的显示格式（“水平条形图”与“网络口碑内容”）调节了中介影响禀赋效应对 eWOM 分散的归因推断的影响。三项互补的研究揭示了在这种情况下的三个关键见解。首先，当消费者已经对产品产生情感依恋并随后遇到分散的eWOM时，eWOM分散程度越高，禀赋效应越强。其次，在这种情况下，禀赋效应越强，高分散eWOM的评论者相关归因推断越多，禀赋效应越弱，低分散eWOM的产品相关归因推断越多。第三，eWOM分散对禀赋效应的正向影响，复杂或不流畅显示格式（即“评论者对产品的印象”）的eWOM分散比简单流畅显示格式（即“水平条形图”）的eWOM分散更强”），更重要的是，禀赋效应对归因推断的中介影响受到 eWOM 分散的显示格式的调节，即使考虑到产品类别（享乐与功利），这一发现仍然存在。