To date there is limited research on the role of customer perceived value for reading and giving positive and negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) of an altruistic service within a singular study. Further, emotions have been shown to be important in altruistic services, yet there is no investigation of the role of emotional value for eWOM. This paper investigates these gaps by proposing and empirically testing a model with data from an online survey of 366 consumers of an altruistic service (blood donation) using structural equation modelling. The results show emotional value is a central value concept that mediates the relationship between reading eWOM and other value dimensions, whereas altruistic value is shown to be important for giving eWOM. The findings have theoretical importance for understanding the nature of customer perceived value in altruistic services and are also useful to managers of altruistic services seeking to increase eWOM as a customer recruitment and retention strategy.

Introduction

Altruistic services, whereby consumers take active roles in civic participation through volunteering and donating time and effort to assist in creating a service, are becoming increasingly important to address many global issues such as blood shortages and natural disasters (Cheung, McColl-Kennedy, & Coote, 2017). However, many altruistic service organisations have limited resources (e.g. infrastructure, staff and funding), which can hinder their ability to provide service offerings and also to recruit and retain consumers who assist in their creation (Alfes, Antunes, & Shantz, 2017). Dropping rates of consumer participation in altruistic services is of increasing concern in countries such as the United States (Ellingson et al., 2017), the United Kingdom (Office for National Statistics [ONS], 2017) and Australia (Oppenheimer, Haski-Leventhal, Holmes, Lockstone-Binney, & Meijis, 2015). Scholars and practitioners have called for greater theoretical and practical insights into how such trends can be reversed, and consumers retained or recruited to ensure altruistic services are sustainable and continue to deliver important, and at times vital, services to the community.