Examining the moderating role of sense of membership in online review evaluations

•We explore sense of membership's moderating effects on review credibility.•Sense of membership positively moderates argument strength's effect.•Sense of membership positively moderates review sidedness’ effect.•Sense of membership negatively moderates review objectivity's effect.•Sense of membership positively moderates review rating's effect.

This paper explores how electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) readers’ sense of membership moderates the effects of eWOM antecedent factors on their perceptions of review credibility. To test our hypotheses, we collected 308 samples from two virtual eWOM forums that are famous in China. The results showed that eWOM readers’ sense of membership positively moderated argument strength, review sidedness and review rating's effects on review credibility; it also had a negative moderating effect on the relationship between review objectivity and review credibility. Based upon these findings, we discussed the theoretical contributions and practical implications of this study.