What to Say to an Online Support‐Seeker? The Influence of Others' Responses and Support‐Seekers' Replies

Research on online support forums has largely overlooked the quality of support provision. The present experiment examined how others’ responses and a support-seeker’s reply can influence action-focused supportiveness, emotion-focused supportiveness, and politeness of readers’ support messages. Results showed that the supportiveness of others’ comments was associated with subsequent readers’ perceptions of public opinion toward the support-seeker and readers’ liking of the support-seeker, which in turn influenced the quality of readers’ support messages.

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