Abstract
This research examines whether the written contents of online reviews can generate systematic differences in the review’s perceived helpfulness even with identical ratings. In addition, this research explores which underlying psychological mechanism creates the systemic differences related to helpfulness. Specifically, the results from our two experiments demonstrate that, when an online hotel review has a positive rating, written contents containing both positive and negative information is perceived as more helpful than reviews with only positive written content. In contrast, when an online hotel review has a negative rating, written contents that contain only negative information is perceived as more helpful than reviews with written content containing both positive and negative information. Importantly, our study shows that the degree of information diagnosticity in online reviews behaves as an underlying psychological mechanism in the process. Our findings not only contribute to the extant literature but also provide useful insights and practical implications for travel websites.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agnihotri A, Bhattacharya S (2016) Online review helpfulness: role of qualitative factors. Psychol Mark 33(11):1006–1017
Anderson C, Han S (2016) Hotel performance impact of socially engaging with consumers. Cornell Hosp Rep 16(10):3–9
Bowerman BL, O’Connell RT (1990) Linear statistical models: an applied approach. Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove
Cao Q, Duan W, Gan Q (2011) Exploring determinants of voting for the “helpfulness” of online user reviews: a text mining approach. Decis Support Syst 50(2):511–521
Chang HH, Tsai YC, Wong KH, Wang JW, Cho FJ (2015) The effects of response strategies and severity of failure on consumer attribution with regard to negative word-of-mouth. Decis Support Syst 71:48–61
Chatterjee S (2020) Drivers of helpfulness of online hotel reviews: a sentiment and emotion mining approach. Int J Hosp Manag 85:102356
Chen MY (2016) Can two-sided messages increase the helpfulness of online reviews? Online Inf Rev 40(3):316–332
Chen CC, Tseng YD (2011) Quality evaluation of product reviews using an information quality framework. Decis Support Syst 50(4):755–768
Cheung CMY, Sia CL, Kuan KK (2012) Is this review believable? A study of factors affecting the credibility of online consumer reviews from an ELM perspective. J Assoc Inf Syst 13(8):2
Chevalier JA, Mayzlin D (2006) The effect of word of mouth on sales: online book reviews. J Mark Res 43(3):345–354
Chua AY, Banerjee S (2017) Analyzing review efficacy on Amazon.com: does the rich grow richer? Comput Hum Behav 75:501–509
Feldman JM, Lynch JG (1988) Self-generated validity and other effects of measurement on belief, attitude, intention, and behavior. J Appl Psychol 73(3):421
Field AP (2018) Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics, 5th edn, Sage
Filieri R (2015) What makes online reviews helpful? A diagnosticity-adoption framework to explain informational and normative influences in e-WOM. J Bus Res 68(6):1261–1270
Filieri R (2016) What makes an online consumer review trustworthy? Ann Tour Res 58:46–64
Fiske ST, Linville PW (1980) What does the schema concept buy us? Personal Soc Psychol Bull 6(4):543–557
Forman C, Ghose A, Wiesenfeld B (2008) Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: the role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets. Inf Syst Res 19(3):291–313
Godes D, Mayzlin D (2009) Firm-created word-of-mouth communication: evidence from a field test. Mark Sci 28(4):721–739
Hao Y, Ye Q, Li Y, Cheng Z (2010) How does the valence of online consumer reviews matter in consumer decision making? Differences between search goods and experience goods. In: 2010 43rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences. IEEE, New York, pp 1–10
Hayes MH (2009) Statistical digital signal processing and modeling. Wiley, New York
Herr PM, Kardes FR, Kim J (1991) Effects of word-of-mouth and product-attribute information on persuasion: an accessibility-diagnosticity perspective. J Consum Res 17(4):454–462
Hong Y, Huang N, Burtch G, Li C (2016) Culture, conformity, and emotional suppression in online reviews. J Assoc Inf Syst 17(11):737–758
Hong H, Xu D, Wang GA, Fan W (2017) Understanding the determinants of online review helpfulness: a meta-analytic investigation. Decis Support Syst 102:1–11
Hu YH, Chen K (2016) Predicting hotel review helpfulness: the impact of review visibility, and interaction between hotel stars and review ratings. Int J Inf Manag 36(6):929–944
Ito TA, Larsen JT, Smith NK, Cacioppo JT (1998) Negative information weighs more heavily on the brain: the negativity bias in evaluative categorizations. J Personal Soc Psychol 75(4):887–900
Jensen ML, Averbeck JM, Zhang Z, Wright KB (2013) Credibility of anonymous online product reviews: a language expectancy perspective. J Manag Inf Syst 30(1):293–324
Kempf DS, Smith RE (1998) Consumer processing of product trial and the influence of prior advertising: a structural modeling approach. J Mark Res 35(3):325–338
Kim Jong Min, Han J, Jun M (2020) Differences in mobile and nonmobile reviews: the role of perceived costs in review-posting. Int J Electron Commer 24(4):450–473
Kostyra DS, Reiner J, Natter M, Klapper D (2016) Decomposing the effects of online customer reviews on brand, price, and product attributes. Int J Res Mark 33(1):11–26
Lee PJ, Hu YH, Lu KT (2018) Assessing the helpfulness of online hotel reviews: a classification-based approach. Telemat Inform 35(2):436–445
Li C, Cui G, Peng L (2017) The signaling effect of management response in engaging customers: a study of the hotel industry. Tour Manag 62:42–53
Mizerski RW (1982) An attribution explanation of the disproportionate influence of unfavorable information. J Consum Res 9(3):301–310
Mudambi S, Schuff D (2010) What makes a helpful review? A study of customer reviews on Amazon. com. 185–197. MIS Q 34(1):185–200
Pan Y, Zhang JQ (2011) Born unequal: a study of the helpfulness of user-generated product reviews. J Retail 87(4):598–612
Park S, Nicolau JL (2015) Asymmetric effects of online consumer reviews. Ann Tour Res 50:67–83
Peeters G (1971) The positive–negative asymmetry: on cognitive consistency and positivity bias. Eur J Soc Psychol 1(4):455–474
Preacher KJ, Hayes AF (2004) SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput 36(4):717–731
Preacher KJ, Hayes AF (2008) Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behav Res Methods 40(3):879–891
Qazi A, Syed KBS, Raj RG, Cambria E, Tahir M, Alghazzawi D (2016) A concept-level approach to the analysis of online review helpfulness. Comput Hum Behav 58:75–81
Qiu L, Pang J, Lim KH (2012) Effects of conflicting aggregated rating on eWOM review credibility and diagnosticity: the moderating role of review valence. Decis Support Syst 54(1):631–643
Racherla P, Friske W (2012) Perceived ‘usefulness’ of online consumer reviews: an exploratory investigation across three services categories. Electron Commer Res Appl 11(6):548–559
Reyes-Menendez A, Saura JR, Filipe F (2019a) The importance of behavioral data to identify online fake reviews for tourism businesses: a systematic review. Peer J Comput Sci 5:e219
Reyes-Menendez A, Saura JR, Martinez-Navalon JG (2019b) The impact of e-WOM on hotels management reputation: exploring TripAdvisor review credibility with the ELM model. IEEE Access. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2919030
Rozin P, Royzman EB (2001) Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personal Soc Psychol Rev 5(4):296–320
Rucker DD, Preacher KJ, Tormala ZL, Petty RE (2011) Mediation analysis in social psychology: current practices and new recommendations. Soc Personal Psychol Compass 5(6):359–371
Schlosser AE (2011) Can including pros and cons increase the helpfulness and persuasiveness of online reviews? The interactive effects of ratings and arguments. J Consum Psychol 21(3):226–239
Sen S, Lerman D (2007) Why are you telling me this? An examination into negative consumer reviews on the web. J Interact Mark 21(4):76–94
Skowronski JJ, Carlston DE (1989) Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: a review of explanations. Psychol Bull 105(1):131–142
Srivastava V, Kalro AD (2019) Enhancing the helpfulness of online consumer reviews: the role of latent (content) factors. J Interact Mark 48:33–50
Tang T, Fang E, Wang F (2014) Is neutral really neutral? The effects of neutral user-generated content on product sales. J Mark 78(4):41–58
Taylor SE (1991) Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychol Bull 110(1):67–85
Wang Y, Chaudhry A (2018) When and how managers’ responses to online reviews affect subsequent reviews. J Mark Res 55(2):163–177
Willemsen LM, Neijens PC, Bronner F, De Ridder JA (2011) “Highly recommended!” The content characteristics and perceived usefulness of online consumer reviews. J Comput Mediat Commun 17(1):19–38
Wright P (1974) The harassed decision maker: time pressures, distractions, and the use of evidence. J Appl Psychol 59(5):555–561
Wu PF (2013) In search of negativity bias: an empirical study of perceived helpfulness of online reviews. Psychol Mark 30(11):971–984
Wu PF, Van der Heijden H, Korfiatis N (2011) The influences of negativity and review quality on the helpfulness of online reviews. In: International conference on information systems
Xie HJ, Miao L, Kuo PJ, Lee BY (2011) Consumers’ responses to ambivalent online hotel reviews: the role of perceived source credibility and pre-decisional disposition. Int J Hosp Manag 30(1):178–183
Xie KL, Zhang Z, Zhang Z (2014) The business value of online consumer reviews and management response to hotel performance. Int J Hosp Manag 43:1–12
Yin D, Bond SD, Zhang H (2014) Anxious or angry? Effects of discrete emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews. MIS Q 38(2):539–560
Yin D, Bond SD, Zhang H (2017) Keep your cool or let it out: nonlinear effects of expressed arousal on perceptions of consumer reviews. J Mark Res 54(3):447–463
Zhou Yusheng, Shuiqing Yang, Yixiao Li, Yuangao Chen, Yao Jianrong, Qazi Atika (2020) Does the review deserve more helpfulness when its title resembles the content? Locating helpful reviews by text mining. Inf Process Manag 57(2):102179
Funding
No funding was received.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
No competing interests exist.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kim, M., Han, J. & Jun, M. Do same-level review ratings have the same level of review helpfulness? The role of information diagnosticity in online reviews. Inf Technol Tourism 22, 563–591 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-020-00191-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-020-00191-1