Risking the self: the impact of self-esteem on negative word-of-mouth behavior

Negative word-of-mouth is a pervasive and persuasive force on consumers, yet little is known about the characteristics of the people who decide to share, or not to share, this information. We examine the impact of consumer trait self-esteem on tendencies to share negative word-of-mouth. Prior work has shown that consumer self-esteem moderates the likelihood of sharing positive word-of-mouth, yet extending this theory to negative word-of-mouth behavior results in conflicting predictions. This paper addresses these contradictions by adopting a two-dimensional view of self-esteem (self-liking and self-competence). We suggest that these dimensions will have opposing effects on the sharing of negative word-of-mouth. Two studies show that individuals high in self-competence are less willing to share negative word-of-mouth, whereas individuals high in self-liking are more willing to do so—results that would be disguised by treating self-esteem as a single-dimension construct.