Don't be rude! The effect of content moderation on consumer-brand forgiveness

While it is a popular belief that venting helps unload frustrations about negative (customer) experiences, its effects on consumers' emotional states and consumer-brand forgiveness (CBF) remain to be explored. Given that a lot of customer complaints are made online, brands seem ambivalent about managing these public complaints without violating consumers' right to free speech. In two experiments, we find that writing a customer complaint increases negative emotions regarding an incident. Moreover, brands can mitigate this negative effect by asking consumers to moderate their speech—for example, with the help of a content moderation policy. Specifically, if brands impose restrictions on consumers' freedom to express their frustrations, essentially asking them for self-censorship, anger levels in their language decrease and CBF increases. We demonstrate that this effect is stronger for consumers with strong self-brand connection.