Purpose

Narrative comments about dentists on physician review sites have been documented to increasingly influence people's selection of their dentists. From a communication standpoint, these comments are a type of narrative communication that people share their experiences with dentists by telling stories. Based on the frameworks of rhetoric structure theory and extended elaborated likelihood model, this study aimed to examine the effects of such storytelling from two perspectives including narrative structure and narrative focus.

Design/methodology/approach

A 4 (narrative structure) × 2 (narrative focus) between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the proposed hypotheses and research questions

Findings

The results showed that a one-sided comprehensive comment focusing on technical competence generated the strongest persuasion effects measured by attitude and behavioral intention. These effects were mediated by perceived narrative credibility and enjoyment.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the extant literature in two ways. First, it extends previous studies of online narrative comments by showing which narrative structure and focus are deemed to be more persuasive when selecting a dentist. Second, it offers a test of two routes of information processing (i.e. cognitive and experiential) to understand the mechanism underlying the effects of narrative comments.

Peer review

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0359

中文翻译：

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一个好牙医与否：了解讲故事在在线牙医评论中的作用

目的

医生评论网站上关于牙医的叙述性评论已被记录在案，越来越多地影响人们对牙医的选择。从交流的角度来看，这些评论是一种叙事交流，人们通过讲故事与牙医分享他们的经验。本研究基于修辞结构理论框架和扩展精细似然模型，从叙事结构和叙事焦点两个角度考察这种叙事的效果。

设计/方法/方法

进行了 4（叙事结构）×2（叙事焦点）的受试者间实验，以检验提出的假设和研究问题

发现

结果表明，以技术能力为重点的片面综合评论产生了以态度和行为意图衡量的最强说服效果。这些影响是由感知的叙事可信度和享受来调节的。

原创性/价值

本研究以两种方式对现存文献作出贡献。首先，它通过显示在选择牙医时哪些叙事结构和焦点被认为更具说服力，扩展了先前对在线叙事评论的研究。其次，它提供了对两种信息处理途径（即认知和经验）的测试，以了解叙事评论影响的潜在机制。

同行评审

本文的同行评审历史可在以下网址获得：https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2020-0359