Social Influence on Future Review Sentiments: An Appraisal-Theoretic View

Abstract Given the importance of online reviews, as evidenced by extant research, we studied an understudied area of the impact of past reviews on sentiments of future reviews. Past studies in the emergent area of incidence of reviews have investigated the generation of ratings but there seems to be a lacuna in the second dimension of the reviews (i.e., the textual sentiments). Through a controlled experiment (N = 232), we analyzed the impact of past reviews on reviewers’ subsequent texts by using the unique lens of social appraisal theory. We found the influence of the selection of reviews on most e-commerce websites could strongly bias subsequent written review sentiments, and this effect is more pronounced when the reviewer experienced higher disconfirmation. We also observed review writers tend to post extreme reviews in the absence of any benchmark or prior reviews. The study results extend the understanding of users’ reviews under social influence and enhance the appraisal theoretic understanding of review generation.

[1]  Bin Gu,et al.  Do online reviews matter? - An empirical investigation of panel data , 2008, Decis. Support Syst..

[2]  ThelwallMike,et al.  Sentiment strength detection in short informal text , 2010 .

[3]  Insu Park,et al.  Disaster Experience and Hospital Information Systems: An Examination of Perceived Information Assurance, Risk, Resilience, and HIS Usefulness , 2015, MIS Q..

[4]  Beomjoon Choi,et al.  The Influence of Customer Experience Quality on Customers' Behavioral Intentions , 2013 .

[5]  J. Russell,et al.  Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: dissecting the elephant. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  A. B. Mohammed.  Selling Smartphones to Generation Z : Understanding Factors Influencing the Purchasing Intention of Smartphone , 2018 .

[7]  James R. Martin.  Interpersonal meaning, persuasion and public discourse: Packing semiotic punch , 1995 .

[8]  Andrew B. Whinston,et al.  Whose and what chatter matters? The effect of tweets on movie sales , 2013, Decis. Support Syst..

[9]  Nicholas Asher,et al.  Appraisal of Opinion Expressions in Discourse , 2009 .

[10]  J. Gross.  The Emerging Field of Emotion Regulation: An Integrative Review , 1998 .

[11]  Jacob Hornik,et al.  Information dissemination via electronic word-of-mouth: Good news travels fast, bad news travels faster! , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[12]  Weiguo Fan,et al.  Measuring Customer Agility from Online Reviews Using Big Data Text Analytics , 2018, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[13]  Alison Lambert,et al.  The customer experience. , 2012 .

[14]  R. Oliver.  Effect of expectation and disconfirmation on postexposure product evaluations: An alternative interpretation. , 1977 .

[15]  C. I. Hovland,et al.  Social Judgment: Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Communication and Attitude Change , 1981 .

[16]  R. Westbrook.  Product/Consumption-Based Affective Responses and Postpurchase Processes , 1987 .

[17]  Rolph E. Anderson.  Consumer Dissatisfaction: The Effect of Disconfirmed Expectancy on Perceived Product Performance , 1973 .

[18]  J. Doogan,et al.  A new way to measure word-of- mouth marketing , 2010 .

[19]  Tung-Ching Lin,et al.  A dual-factor model of loyalty to IT product - The case of smartphones , 2015, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[20]  W. Hirst,et al.  Remembering in conversations: the social sharing and reshaping of memories. , 2012, Annual review of psychology.

[21]  Songbo Tan,et al.  A survey on sentiment detection of reviews , 2009, Expert Syst. Appl..

[22]  Chrysanthos Dellarocas,et al.  The Impact of Online Product Reviews on Product Returns , 2018, Inf. Syst. Res..

[23]  T. Wigram,et al.  Therapeutic Songwriting in Music Therapy , 2008 .

[24]  Chrysanthos Dellarocas,et al.  The Digitization of Word-of-Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[25]  S. Herbst.  Classical Democracy, Polls, and Public Opinion: Theoretical Frameworks for Studying the Development of Public Sentiment , 1991 .

[26]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Virtual Product Experience: Effects of Visual and Functional Control of Products on Perceived Diagnosticity and Flow in Electronic Shopping , 2004, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[27]  C. Kanniammal.  Interpersonal relationship. , 2020, The Nursing journal of India.

[28]  B. Rimé.  Emotion Elicits the Social Sharing of Emotion: Theory and Empirical Review , 2009 .

[29]  Gabriel J. Biehal,et al.  Consumers' Use of Memory and External Information in Choice: Macro and Micro Perspectives , 1986 .

[30]  P. Shaver,et al.  How Emotions Develop and How they Organise Development , 1990 .

[31]  C. Willness.  The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations By David Day (Ed.) New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014. $225.00. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐975561‐5 , 2015 .

[32]  R. Lazarus.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1991 .

[33]  C. Meyer,et al.  Understanding customer experience. , 2007, Harvard business review.

[34]  Investigating subjectivity : research on lived experience , 1992 .

[35]  Ann E. Schlosser.  Posting versus Lurking: Communicating in a Multiple Audience Context , 2005 .

[36]  Subhajyoti Bandyopadhyay,et al.  Effect of “Following” on Contributions to Open Source Communities , 2015, ICIS.

[37]  Samuel Bendahan,et al.  Causality and Endogeneity , 2014 .

[38]  Kang Liu,et al.  Book Review: Sentiment Analysis: Mining Opinions, Sentiments, and Emotions by Bing Liu , 2015, CL.

[39]  Chrysanthos Dellarocas,et al.  Are Consumers More Likely to Contribute Online Reviews for Hit or Niche Products? , 2010, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[40]  Petra Kaufmann,et al.  Experimental And Quasi Experimental Designs For Research , 2016 .

[41]  Noah J. Goldstein,et al.  Social influence: compliance and conformity. , 2004, Annual review of psychology.

[42]  Jinhong Xie,et al.  Online Social Interactions: A Natural Experiment on Word of Mouth versus Observational Learning , 2010 .

[43]  Chia-Chen Chen,et al.  What drives in-app purchase intention for mobile games? An examination of perceived values and loyalty , 2016, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[44]  Kexin Zhao,et al.  Sources and impacts of social influence from online anonymous user reviews , 2018, Inf. Manag..

[45]  X. Zhang,et al.  Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics , 2010 .

[46]  N. Frijda.  The laws of emotion. , 1988, The American psychologist.

[47]  E. Clemons,et al.  When Online Reviews Meet Hyperdifferentiation: A Study of the Craft Beer Industry , 2006 .

[48]  Mike Thelwall,et al.  Sentiment in short strength detection informal text , 2010 .

[49]  D. Cicchetti.  Emotion and Adaptation , 1993 .

[50]  Stefan Stieglitz,et al.  Emotions and Information Diffusion in Social Media—Sentiment of Microblogs and Sharing Behavior , 2013, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[51]  Sheng Wei Lin,et al.  An approach to initiating eWOM intentions: A study on the effects of reference price and value homophily , 2017, Internet Res..

[52]  Mike Thelwall,et al.  Sentiment strength detection for the social web , 2012, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[53]  S. Davey,et al.  Assessment of Smartphone Addiction in Indian Adolescents: A Mixed Method Study by Systematic-review and Meta-analysis Approach , 2014, International journal of preventive medicine.

[54]  Jang-Sun Hwang,et al.  How Consumers Evaluate eWOM (Electronic Word-of-Mouth) Messages , 2009, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[55]  J. Wu,et al.  Disconfirmation Effect on Online Rating Behavior: A Structural Model , 2014, Inf. Syst. Res..

[56]  David A. Schweidel,et al.  Online Product Opinions: Incidence, Evaluation, and Evolution , 2012, Mark. Sci..

[57]  Qiang Ye,et al.  Sentiment classification of online reviews to travel destinations by supervised machine learning approaches , 2009, Expert Syst. Appl..

[58]  A. Parasuraman,et al.  SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. , 1988 .

[59]  Jonah A. Berger.  Word of mouth and interpersonal communication: A review and directions for future research , 2014 .

[60]  Kai Lung Hui,et al.  What Makes a Review Voted? An Empirical Investigation of Review Voting in Online Review Systems , 2015, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[61]  Craig A. Smith,et al.  Appraisal theory: Overview, assumptions, varieties, controversies. , 2001 .

[62]  Frank Biocca,et al.  Consumer Learning and the Effects of Virtual Experience Relative to Indirect and Direct Product Experience , 2008 .

[63]  Katherine L. Milkman,et al.  What Makes Online Content Viral? , 2012 .

[64]  Choon-Ling Sia,et al.  Is This Review Believable? A Study of Factors Affecting the Credibility of Online Consumer Reviews from an ELM Perspective , 2012, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[65]  David Davenport,et al.  Anonymity on the Internet: why the price may be too high , 2002, CACM.

[66]  David Schuff,et al.  What Makes a Helpful Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon.com , 2010 .

[67]  Pei-Yu Sharon Chen,et al.  The Impact of Online Recommendations and Consumer Feedback on Sales , 2004, ICIS.

[68]  Erkki Sutinen,et al.  Are They Different? Affect, Feeling, Emotion, Sentiment, and Opinion Detection in Text , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

[69]  Ritu Agarwal,et al.  Vocal Minority and Silent Majority: How Do Online Ratings Reflect Population Perceptions of Quality? , 2015, MIS Q..

[70]  Lorin M. Hitt,et al.  Self Selection and Information Role of Online Product Reviews , 2007, Inf. Syst. Res..

[71]  Wai Fong Boh,et al.  A Temporal Study of the Effects of Online Opinions: Information Sources Matter , 2017, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[72]  Raji Srinivasan,et al.  Social Influence Effects in Online Product Ratings , 2012 .