To date, online review usefulness studies have explored the independent influence of central and peripheral cues on online review usefulness. Employing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), however, we argue that central and peripheral cues are jointly, not independently, processed by online users. For this exploration, we develop and measure “review consistency” variable (i.e., level of consistency between a review text and its attendant review rating), and rating inconsistency (i.e., level of inconsistency between a review rating and the average rating). We find a positive effect of review consistency on the review usefulness. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, we find a positive effect of rating inconsistency on the review usefulness. Our results also indicate that the contingency effect of rating inconsistency on the relationship between review consistency and review usefulness. Particularly, we find that rating inconsistency negatively moderates the effect of review consistency on the review usefulness. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

迄今为止，在线评论有用性研究已经探索了中心提示和外围提示对在线评论有用性的独立影响。但是，我们采用细化可能性模型（ELM），认为中央线索和外围线索是由在线用户共同而非独立地处理的。在本次探索中，我们开发并测量“评论一致性”变量（即，评论文本与其伴随的评论评分之间的一致性级别）和评分不一致（即，评论评分与平均评分之间的不一致级别）。我们发现评论一致性对评论有用性的积极影响。但是，与我们的假设相反，我们发现评分不一致对评价的有用性产生了积极影响。我们的结果还表明，评分不一致对审核一致性和审核有用性之间的关系具有偶然性。特别是，我们发现评分不一致会对审核一致性对审核有用性的影响产生负面影响。研究结果的理论和实践意义进行了讨论。