The Impact of Word of Mouth via Twitter On Moviegoers' Decisions and Film Revenues: Revisiting Prospect Theory: How WOM about Movies Drives Loss-Aversion and Reference-Dependence Behaviors

This study drew on the existing decision process theory to empirically examine the effect of word of mouth (WOM) generated by social media. The prospect theory was adopted to illustrate how both the volume and valence of WOM influence a person's decision to watch a movie through the movie quality evaluation stage. Using U.S. movie industry data and online post data from Twitter, the authors found that the effect of online WOM is well explained by the prospect theory. Particularly, findings suggest that intensively advertising a movie before its release to attract moviegoers could backfire by raising the moviegoers' expectations.