Anxiety and Ephemeral Social Media Use in Negative eWOM Creation

Consumers regularly share negative eWOM regarding brand experiences, yet the effects of emotions in this process are unknown. Using the framework of Stimulus–Organism–Response theory we operationalized our study in the context of ephemeral (self-deleting) social media. Across two studies, consumers experienced anxiety during the creation of eWOM, particularly after considering a negative brand experience. Anxiety was manifest in consumers’ decisions to reduce the time availability of online messages and appeased by the use of ephemeral social media. This behavior, in theory, reduces the threat to consumers’ impression management goals caused by sharing negative eWOM within their social networks. Further evidence is found as consumers limit (lengthen) message availability a) when including less (more) positive words in their messages, or b) when sharing about non-economic (economic) experiences. We discuss the implications of consumer emotion and anxiety on the availability of eWOM in social media.