Social Presence Reinforcement and Computer-Mediated Communication: The Effect of the Solicitor's Photography on Compliance to a Survey Request Made by E-Mail

Abstract

Personal information is scarce in computer-mediated communication. So when information about the sender is attached with an e-mail, this could induce a positive feeling toward the sender. An experiment was carried out where a male and a female student-solicitor, by way of an e-mail, requested a student-subject to participate in a survey. In half of the cases, a digital photograph of the solicitor appeared at the end of the e-mail. Results show that subjects agreed more readily to the request in the experimental condition than in the control condition where no digital photograph was sent with the e-mail. The importance of social information on computer-mediated communication is used to explain such results.