EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Do same-level review ratings have the same level of review helpfulness? The role of information diagnosticity in online reviews

Miyea Kim (), Jeongsoo Han () and Mina Jun ()
Additional contact information
Miyea Kim: Yonsei University
Jeongsoo Han: Middlesex University Dubai
Mina Jun: Sookmyung Women’s University

Information Technology & Tourism, 2020, vol. 22, issue 4, No 5, 563-591

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Information diagnosticity; Review rating; Online review; Review helpfulness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40558-020-00191-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:infott:v:22:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s40558-020-00191-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ystems/journal/40558

DOI: 10.1007/s40558-020-00191-1

Access Statistics for this article

Information Technology & Tourism is currently edited by Zheng Xiang

More articles in Information Technology & Tourism from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-26
Handle: RePEc:spr:infott:v:22:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s40558-020-00191-1