The Influence Of Responsibility Attribution Of Corporate Apology Of Agricultural Electric Commerce On Consumers' Opportunistic Claims

With the rapid development of e-commerce,the scale of online shopping for agricultural products in China is constantly expanding.By 2017,the annual growth rate of China's online sales of agricultural products was around 10%.However,service failures such as delayed delivery,discrepancies between actual products and product description,as well as damaged products,all frequently trigger complaints about online shopping,particularly about agricultural products,which has became one of the centers of consumer complaints and negative reviews.Facing the issue of service failure,many agricultural ecommerce enterprises take service recovery such as apologies to restore consumers' confidence.As a result,whether these strategies may comply with consumers' attitudes and social norms have been the focus of both the business community and the academia.However,in the face of apologies and promises extended by the businesses,consumers' follow-up actions may not always be in line with social norms.Consumers have information advantages and advantages on their right protection regulations against the real situation of quality.As a result,unethical customer behavior is increasing in the online shopping environment,and opportunistic behaviors such as misrepresenting information and claims cannot be ignored.Therefore,in order to reduce agricultural e-commerce services failures,one should explore agricultural e-commerces' apology strategies to reduce the subsequent tendency of consumer opportunism,so as to promote the healthy development of industry.A growing body of research has started to explore enterprises' apologies.However,these literatures largely approach this topic from the whole enterprise,ignoring the different influence when enterprises attribute responsibility to the enterprise or the staff in apologies.Futhermore,the researches on enterprises' apologies and consumer behavior mostly focus on consumers' social norms behavior.Absent from these literatures is an examination of how attribution in apologies reduces dysfunctional customer behavior.Therefore,this study discusses the discrepancy from the perspective of internal attribution in agricultural ecommerce service failure.It proposes a theoretical model based on the attribution theory,dividing the internal attribution of responsibility in corporate apology behavior into the attribution to enterprises or individuals.Based on a microeconomic survey of 1208 consumers,this study analyzes consumers' cognitive and opportunistic behavior between the two types of responsibility attribution in enterprises apology.It further discusses which kind of responsibility attribution can more effectively improve consumers' expected responsibility,thus reduce opportunistic claim.The study continues to analyze the moderated effect of agricultural products perishability and metamorphic proportion on consumers' opportunistic claim.Finally,this study puts forward policy suggestions which are beneficial for the development of enterprises and agricultural e-commerce industry.To some extent,this study reveals the current situation and characteristics of consumers' opportunistic claims.Based on the analysis of the false proportion and the amount claimed,it finds that about 10%-20% of consumers have opportunistic claim behavior.Consumers may make a large overstatement of deterioration ratio to get very high compensation.Through regression analysis,results are as follows:(1)Compared with attributing responsibility to enterprises in an enterprise apology,attributing responsibility to individuals in an enterprise causes lower opportunistic claim behavior.(2)Expected responsibility plays a mediated effect in the relationship between the responsibility attribution and opportunistic claim.(3)The perishability of agricultural products partly moderates the direct prediction of responsibility attribution to opportunistic claims.And it moderates the predictive effect of responsibility expectation on opportunistic claims.Specifically,the perishability of agricultural products significantly weakens the effect of the responsibility attribution on the mispresent of false proportion.But the moderating effect does not significantly in the relationship between responsibility attribution of and the amount claimed.Meanwhile,the perishability of agricultural products significantly weakens the impact of expected responsibility on the proportion of false claims and the amount claimed.(4)The ratio of deterioration of agricultural products has no moderating effect on the direct prediction of the responsibility attribution to opportunistic claims,but it can moderate the predictability of expected responsibility on opportunistic claims.In other words,the ratio of deterioration dose not significantly weaken the relationship between excepted responsibility and the portion of false claims,but can significantly weaken the relationship between excepted responsibility and the amount claimed.Based on the result of analysis and the current situation of agricultural e-commerce,this study puts forward the following suggestions.First of all,enterprises should pay attention to the meaning of corporate's apology,taking responsibility for service failures in the apology.They should offer an appropriate apology and amount of compensation upfront rather than waiting for customers to claim or renegotiate,which can reduce consumer opportunistic behaviors.Secondly,enterprises should formulate differentiated apology and compensation strategy for different service failures.Finally,enterprises,government and society should enhance consumers' sense of responsibility in both to create a supportive trading atmosphere and promote the sustainable development of the industry.