Purpose

We investigate the joint impacts of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of reviews and attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

Design/methodology/approach

We performed three studies to test our research model, presenting participants with scenarios involving product reviews and prior users' helpful and unhelpful votes across experimental settings.

Findings

A high helpfulness ratio boosts users’ trust and influences behaviors in both positive and negative reviews. This effect is more pronounced in attribute-based reviews than emotion-based ones. Unlike the ratio effect, helpfulness magnitude significantly impacts only negative attribute-based reviews.

Research limitations/implications

Future research should investigate voting systems in various online contexts, such as Facebook post likes, Twitter microblog thumb-ups and up-votes for article comments on platforms like The New York Times.

Practical implications

Our findings have significant implications for voting system-providers implementing information techniques on third-party review platforms, participatory sites emphasizing user-generated content and online retailers prioritizing product awareness and reputation.

Originality/value

This study addresses an identified need; that is, the helpfulness votes as an additional trust cue and the joint effects of three trust cues – content, sentiment and helpfulness votes – of online product reviews on the trust of customers in reviews and their consequential attitude toward the product/service reviewed.

中文翻译：

---

评论内容、情绪和帮助性投票如何共同影响评论和态度的信任

目的

我们研究了在线产品评论的三个信任线索（内容、情绪和有用性投票）对评论信任度和对所评论产品/服务的态度的联合影响。

设计/方法论/途径

我们进行了三项研究来测试我们的研究模型，向参与者展示涉及产品评论以及先前用户在实验设置中的有用和无用投票的场景。

发现

高有用率可以提高用户的信任度并影响正面和负面评论中的行为。这种效应在基于属性的评论中比基于情感的评论更为明显。与比率效应不同，有用程度仅显着影响基于属性的负面评论。

研究局限性/影响

未来的研究应该调查各种在线环境中的投票系统，例如 Facebook 帖子点赞、Twitter 微博点赞以及《纽约时报》等平台上文章评论的点赞。

实际影响

我们的研究结果对于在第三方评论平台上实施信息技术的投票系统提供商、强调用户生成内容的参与网站以及优先考虑产品知名度和声誉的在线零售商具有重大意义。

原创性/价值

这项研究解决了已确定的需求；也就是说，有用性投票作为额外的信任线索，以及在线产品评论的三个信任线索（内容、情绪和有用性投票）的共同影响，对客户对评论的信任以及他们对所评论的产品/服务的相应态度产生影响。