Abstract:

As a very common cultural phenomenon, "Face" is affecting all aspects of Chinese life. With the continuous development of the Internet, people are spending more and consuming more on the Internet. As a virtual world, the ways of communication or social cues on the Internet are obviously different from the ways using in the real world. But at the same time, due to the use of the network, users in different sites all have a unique status symbol. Therefore, in order to maintain their self-images in the virtual world, there might exist face consciousness in a virtual world which is similar to their real lives. Firstly, this paper aims to explore the dimensions of online face consciousness (OFC) and its specific content. The results showed that OFC includes three dimensions: the influence of the network, network identity and network relationships. Secondly, we found that there is a positive relationship between online face consciousness (OFC) and the online word-of-mouth (eWOM). Furthermore, we found the strength of the relationship between the users under different types of sites can have significant influence on the relationship between OFC and eWOM. Specifically, as for the strange relationship type, OFC has a significant influence on eWOM, but for a familiar relationship type, this effect is not significant. Finally, we discussed the difference of face consciousness between online world and real world.

Key words: Online Face Consciousness (OFC), Social Network, eWOM, Relationship Type