Uncertainty avoidance is expressed as the tolerance for unstructured, ambiguous, or unpredictable future events (Hofstede 2001). Hofstede (2001) states that the unpredictability of the future is a given fact of human existence, of which all people are conscious. However, people in different cultures deal with this fact in different ways.
High-uncertainty-avoidance cultures are characterized by a need to reduce ambiguity and risk (Kale and Barns 1992), which is manifested in a high prevalence of strict rules and regulations. Compared with people in low uncertainty-avoidance cultures, members of high uncertainty-avoidance cultures perceive life more as a threat and experience higher levels of anxiety. To lower this anxiety, they should be more motivated to reduce the perceived ambiguity and uncertainty of life (Doney, Cannon, and Mullen 1998). A way to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty in the context of services is to seek advice or assurance from trusted others. Consistent with this notion, high uncertainty avoidance is associated with a higher level of opinion-sharing (Lam, Lee, and Mizerski 2009; Liu, Furrer, and Sudharshan 2001), as well as opinion-seeking (Dawar, Parker, and Price 1996; Money, Gilly, and Graham 1998), behavior. In the context of service relationships, this level would suggest more reliance on received WOM referral from reliable others who already have experience with or knowledge of the service when evaluating a provider’s service quality. People in high-uncertainty-avoidance cultures will also seek these referrals in already existing service relationships because they want to reassure themselves of their opinion about the service provider.