ABSTRACT

Consumers evaluate the helpfulness of online reviews using both characteristics of the review and the reviewer. We explore whether online review length signals latent information about the reviewer’s credibility, reflected by the reviewer’s honesty and social status. Analyzing a dataset of online reviews, we show that review length has opposing curvilinear relationships with reviewer honesty and social status. Taken together, long and short reviews communicate that the reviewer is less honest, but has higher social status, while medium length reviews signal greater reviewer honesty, but lower social status. Further, reviewer honesty and social status each mediate the review lengthhelpfulness relationship.

摘要

消费者使用评论和评论者的特征来评估在线评论的有用性。我们探索在线评论长度是否表示有关评论者可信度的潜在信息，反映在评论者的诚实和社会地位上。通过分析在线评论的数据集，我们发现评论长度与评论者的诚实度和社会地位呈相反的曲线关系。总而言之，长评论和短评论表明评论者不太诚实，但社会地位较高，而中等长度的评论表明评论者更诚实，但社会地位较低。此外，评论者的诚实度和社会地位各自调节评论长度的帮助关系。