住客酒店点评对调节焦点个体的说服效果

The Persuasion Effect of Hotel Online Reviews on Regulatory-focus Tourist

网络Web 2.0时代,游客在预订酒店时常常通过查询先前住客点评内容来了解酒店情况。住客生成的网络点评内容是影响口碑效果的重要因素,但点评内容正负性和详略性的作用现有研究还存在一些争议。以调节焦点理论为基础研究酒店预订中住客点评的说服效果,通过2×2×2实验研究发现,负向酒店点评对预防焦点个体的说服效果更优,正向酒店点评对促进焦点个体的说服效果更优,详尽的酒店点评内容对预防焦点个体的说服效果更大,简略的酒店点评内容对促进焦点型个体的说服效果更大。

In the era of Web 2.0, hotel guests can write reviews about a hotel on the Internet,introducing their consumption experience. Now, most hotels can be booked online, however, furtherdetails of which are rarely learned by tourists. To ensure correct booking, online reviews are necessaryfor tourists to read. Online review is a form of electronic word-of-mouth （EWOM）, which has becomethe main factor affecting sales of product.The valence and briefness of EWOM contents are twoimportant factors influencing EWOM effects, which is still proved to be controversial in their effects inmany literatures. Some scholars point out that negative and detailed reviews are more influential thanthe positive and detailed ones, but other scholars point out positive and brief reviews are moreinfluential than negative and brief reviews. In order to fill the gap, based on the regulatory focus theory,we studied the persuasive effect of hotel reviews online.According to the regulatory focus theory,positive- oriented customers are apt to pursue profits, whereas prevention- focused people are morelikely to avoid losses, and these two types of people have different sensitivities to positive and negativeresults. Therefore, we put forward the hypothesis that positive- oriented people are inclined to readpositive or brief reviews, while prevention-focused people are more likely to read negative or detailedreviews. A 2 （valence： positive, negative） × 2（regulatory focus： promotion focused, prevention focused）× 2 （content： brief, detailed） lab experiment was been done to verify all hypotheses. Participants wereasked to read 10 online reviews about an anonymous hotel, and then to evaluate the persuasiveness ofthese online reviews. 280 tourists participated in the experiment, and 243 questionnaires were found tobe effective, with an effective rate of 86.7%. By analysis of variance, we have found that： （1） negativereviews have more powerful persuasiveness than positive reviews. But regulatory focus types of peoplehave the moderated effect, positive reviews have more influences onpromotion- focused people,negative reviews have more influences on prevention-focused people; （2） Detailed reviews have morepowerful persuasive effects than that of brief reviews, which is similar to opinions in most of previousliteratures. But the persuasive effect was moderated by the regulatory focus types of people. Promotionfocusedpeople are accustomed to use the eager strategy and like to do something quickly, so theyprefer brief reviews. By contrast, prevention-focused people are accustomed to use vigilant strategy andlike to avoid losses, so they prefer detailed reviews. Based on the research results, some suggestions aregiven as follows： （1） tourism enterprises shall monitor online reviews and respond the negative word-ofmouthin order to eliminate the negative influences and protect the reputations of their brands; （2） Ifconsumers are promotion-focused people, or if promotion-focused tourism products are sold, tourismenterprises should encourage consumers to write brief online reviews; （3） When tourism enterprisesrespond to the reviews online, they should write briefly to respond to positive reviews , and writeelaborately to respond to the negative reviews.