“负面偏见”对平台认证型评论感知有用性的影响

The Impact of “Negativity Bias” on Perceived Usefulness of Platform Recognized Reviews

从第三方评论平台对评论信息操控的角度,将评论分为平台认证型评论和一般评论。以平台认证型评论为研究对象,采用两阶段情境试验法,基于归因理论,探讨了'负面偏见'对在线评论感知有用性的影响,及评论者等级和'负面偏见'两者的交互作用对平台认证型评论的感知有用性影响差异与内在机制。研究结果表明:①对于平台认证型评论,负面评论感知有用性高于正面评论,即'负面偏见'效应依然显著;②评论者等级会调节'负面偏见'对评论感知有用性的影响,平台认证型正面评论的评论者等级越高,评论感知有用性越高;但这种影响差异对负面评论不显著;③在'负面偏见'和评论者等级的交互作用对评论感知有用性的影响中,评论归因发挥中介效应,评论者等级高(vs.评论者等级低)能够显著激发消费者对正面评论的产品归因倾向,从而增强对评论的有用性感知;但对于负面评论,评论者等级高和低对评论归因倾向带来的影响差异不显著,导致无论评论者等级高和低,平台认证型负面评论感知有用性差异不显著。本研究不仅完善了在线评论的研究框架,对在线评论有用性影响因素的研究进行了一定的补充,而且拓展和丰富了归因理论的应用和解释范围,最后根据研究结论为企业管理和利用在线评论提供了有针对性的对策建议。

Review helpfulness,which refers to the extent to which an online review is perceived by consumers to facilitates a consumer’s purchase decision making,has captured considerable attention both from scholars and practitioners.Prior studies examining the effect of review valence on review helpfulness have produced mixed results.Most of past studies have shown that people tend to weight negative reviews more than positive reviews under certain circumstances.However,the reviews in previous studies were mostly general reviews without the recognition of the review platform.Therefore,this study focuses on the platform-recognized reviews of experienced products.Based upon the attribution theory,the effects of'negativity bias'on the on perceived helpfulness of platform-recognized reviews are examined.Furthermore,the interaction effect between reviewer level and'negativity bias'on perceived helpfulness of platform-recognized reviews and the intrinsic causal relationship between them are examined.A number of undergraduates are invited to participate in our studies.The reviews we adopted come from the real online review environment such as Dazhongdianping APP as the experimental data.The conclusions are as follows:First,for the platform-recognized reviews,the perceived usefulness of negative reviews is higher than that of positive reviews,that is,the negative bias effect is still significant.Secondly,for the platform-recognized reviews,reviewer level will adjust the influence of'negativity bias'on perceived usefulness of reviews.The higher the reviewer level,the more helpful the positive review is.However,the difference is not significant for negative reviews.Thirdly,these effects will be mediated by review attribution.That is to say,positive reviews with high-level reviewer(vs.low-level reviewer)can be more likely to be attributed to a product itself rather than reviewers.Consequently,they are perceived to be more helpful.However,for negative reviews,there was no significant difference in the effect of reviewer level on the review attribution.So,no matter the level of the reviewer is high or low,there is no significant difference in perceived usefulness of the platform-recognized negative reviews.It is assumed this study can contribute to not only the research framework of online reviews and the influence factors of perceived helpfulness,but also expanding and enriching the range of application and interpretation signal theory and of attribution.According to the research conclusions,some targeted countermeasures and suggestions for the enterprise management are provided.