The Effect of Source’s Credibility on Determining the Authenticity of Misinformation: Focusing on the Moderating Effect of Receiver’s Characteristics

Few people will be able to live a day without being exposed to information. Whether it"s through books, YouTube or Internet searches, people live by searching and accepting various information every day, with different routes. However, compared to the vast amount of information, people have physical limitations, including time and cognition, so they process all the information exposed to them in their own ways. Among the various problems that may occur in this process, the damage caused by the inclusion of misinformation in the individual"s information acceptance process is so great that it cannot be overlooked. Therefore, in order to create a healthy information accepting environment, this study focused on exploring factors that affect the process of recognizing information as fact or false when people encounter it. As a result of empirical analysis of the structural model using PLS-SEM, the source"s credibility had a significant effect on the perceived falsity of the information. It was also confirmed that the effect of confirmation bias was significant among the moderating effects of the three receiver characteristics. In other words, the greater the belief in the source who provides information, the higher the level of a true recognition of the provided information, and the difference in the degree of influence of public confidence on the information acceptance process is occurred depending on each person"s opinion.