Journal
INFORMATION SYSTEMS FRONTIERS
Volume 23, Issue 5, Pages 1287-1301Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10796-020-10030-7
Keywords
Online reviews; Review consistency; Review helpfulness; E-word of mouth; Machine learning; Text mining
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This study argues that online users jointly process central and peripheral cues, instead of processing them independently. It found a positive effect of review consistency on review usefulness, but also a positive effect of rating inconsistency. Rating inconsistency was found to negatively moderate the effect of review consistency on review usefulness.
To date, online review usefulness studies have explored the independent influence of central and peripheral cues on online review usefulness. Employing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), however, we argue that central and peripheral cues are jointly, not independently, processed by online users. For this exploration, we develop and measure review consistency variable (i.e., level of consistency between a review text and its attendant review rating), and rating inconsistency (i.e., level of inconsistency between a review rating and the average rating). We find a positive effect of review consistency on the review usefulness. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, we find a positive effect of rating inconsistency on the review usefulness. Our results also indicate that the contingency effect of rating inconsistency on the relationship between review consistency and review usefulness. Particularly, we find that rating inconsistency negatively moderates the effect of review consistency on the review usefulness. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
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