Let's Laugh About It! Using Humor to Address Complainers’ Online Incivility

Abstract

This research investigates whether companies’ use of humor is an effective strategy to address complainers’ incivility on social media. Using three main experiments, the authors examine observers’ evaluation of companies’ humorous responses on social media in relation to the degree of incivility of the complaints. The authors find, first, that observers develop greater purchase intentions toward companies that use humor to respond to uncivil complaints. Drawing on benign violation theory, they explain that observers are less committed to uncivil complainers, which makes the use of humor more benign and thus more amusing. Second, they compare the effectiveness of humor with an accommodative recovery (e.g., apologies). When the complaint is civil, an accommodative recovery is a more effective strategy than affiliative humor. However, when the complaint is uncivil, affiliative humor is more interesting than an accommodative recovery because of greater engagement with the post (i.e., likes and shares) and similar purchase intentions. Theoretical and managerial implications of these results are then discussed.