@inproceedings{77f74ce620dd4b0a9031ffc71d1c862b,
title = "Is the whole equal to the sum of its parts? Exploring the impact of inconsistency on perceived helpfulness of a set of reviews",
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.",
author = "Dezhi Yin and {de Vreede}, Triparna and Logan Steele and {de Vreede}, {Gert Jan}",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.; 52nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019 ; Conference date: 08-01-2019 Through 11-01-2019",
year = "2019",
language = "English",
series = "Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences",
publisher = "IEEE Computer Society",
pages = "4686--4694",
editor = "Bui, {Tung X.}",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019",
}