Is the whole equal to the sum of its parts? Exploring the impact of inconsistency on perceived helpfulness of a set of reviews

Dezhi Yin, Triparna de Vreede, Logan Steele, Gert Jan de Vreede

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Despite a growing literature on the helpfulness of individual reviews, scant attention has been paid to the helpfulness of a set of reviews. Moreover, it is generally assumed that the helpfulness of a review set can be derived from averaging the individual reviews' helpfulness evaluations. Drawing on bounded rationality theories, we hypothesize that this assumption may not always be valid, and that consumers' helpfulness perception of a review set is also determined by inter-review consistency. A carefully designed experiment revealed that the whole differs from the sum of its parts when the reviews are consistent with each other or are contradicting each other, but does not differ when the reviews contain mixed, non-contradicting opinions. These findings deepen our understanding of inconsistency in online reviews and have a potential to change how reviews should be presented to the consumers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 52nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019
EditorsTung X. Bui
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages4686-4694
Number of pages9
ISBN (Electronic)9780998133126
StatePublished - 2019
Event52nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019 - Maui, United States
Duration: 8 Jan 201911 Jan 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Volume2019-January
ISSN (Print)1530-1605

Conference

Conference52nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMaui
Period8/01/1911/01/19

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