Who shows more emotion when interacting with a company on social media? A study of political orientation and tweet sentiment

This study provides insights into how consumers interact with companies on social media. The study draws upon the theory of personality and political orientation to examine the relationship between consumers’ political orientation and the emotion used in their online interactions with companies. To provide additional understanding of this relationship, the study incorporates the political orientation of companies as a moderator. Leveraging Twitter (now known as ‘X’) as a research context, the study provides empirical evidence that more conservative consumers show less positive emotion when interacting with companies. The findings suggest that this relationship is weaker when the company involved has a more conservative (or less liberal) political orientation. Finally, the main effect follows a non-linear pattern that becomes stronger at an exponential rate among the most conservative consumers.