ACIS 2024 Proceedings
Abstract
User-generated reviews (UGR) play a vital role in informing purchase decisions, yet the abundance of reviews poses a challenge of information overload to consumers. Voting mechanisms to identify the helpfulness of a review offer a solution, optimizing information by guiding consumers toward helpful reviews. While previous research has identified antecedents affecting review helpfulness evaluation, understanding the relative importance of different cues remains underexplored, particularly the interplay between content and non-content cues. Through the lens of salience theory, this study examines how reviews are voted (perceived) helpful. In particular, we explore how cue salience affects individuals' perception of reviews and, ultimately, review helpfulness. This approach enables us to capture the complex nature of information cues through which individuals perceive the salience of information and cues to determine review helpfulness. We demonstrate that content and non-content cues are incongruently influential in explaining perceived helpfulness. Specifically, our findings provided evidence that information stemming from non-content cues (attributes of UGR) can compensate interchangeably with information from content cues when users evaluate the helpfulness of a review.
Recommended Citation
Nguyen, Thuy Tien; Tripathi, Arvind; and Wong, Randy, "Understanding Perceived Review Helpfulness Through the Lens of Salience" (2024). ACIS 2024 Proceedings. 131.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2024/131