How does mobile device usage influence review helpfulness through consumer evaluation? Evidence from TripAdvisor

摘要

Although extant papers have investigated the direct impact of mobile devices on the review helpfulness, little is known about its indirect impact. In this paper, we address this issue by examining the mediating roles of consumer evaluation captured by both basic and optional review elements as well as the moderating role of response period. Combining a dataset from TripAdvisor with advanced mediation models, we find that the use of mobile devices significantly influences the content of review elements, which indirectly results in the change of review helpfulness. In detail, review extremity and text negative sentiment positively mediate the effect of mobile devices on review helpfulness, as opposed to the negative mediations of text length and multidimensional ratings. Moreover, comparisons of their effect sizes reveal that text length and multidimensional ratings are responsible for the lower helpfulness of mobile reviews. Drawing on the theory of temporal distance, our moderation-mediation model reveals extending response period can be an effective way of curing the low helpfulness of mobile reviews. Our results deepen the extant understanding about the impact of mobile devices and provide practitioners important implications regarding the design of review elements and the policy of managing reviews.