Impact of online negative and positive reviews on app innovation
Lin Sun,
Yuting He and
Feng Fu
PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-18
Abstract:
Past studies have suggested that online reviews positively impact app innovation. However, extant research has not yet explored the distinct impacts of online negative and positive reviews on app innovation. Based on signaling theory and negative bias, this study empirically examines the effects of online negative reviews versus online positive reviews on app innovation by using panel data from the iOS App Store in China. The findings demonstrate that online negative reviews have a more positive influence on app innovation than online positive reviews. Additionally, compared with online positive reviews, app performance more effectively weakens the promoting effect of online negative reviews on app innovation. Moreover, both app history and platform owner’s entry play a positive moderating role in the impact of online negative reviews on app innovation, while no positive moderating effect is observed in the impact of online positive reviews on app innovation. These results demonstrate the different effects of online negative reviews and online positive reviews on app innovation, expand the contingent value of online reviews and app innovation.
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0323205 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 23205&type=printable (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0323205
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323205
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().