Online reviews have become an important source of information for consumers’ purchase decisions. Drawing upon the consumer expertise and persuasion literature, this study proposes that consumers are more willing to accept a reviewer's recommendation when his/her historical ratings in a certain product domain display greater variance. Five experiments provide consistent support for this hypothesis and the underlying process. Study 1 tests the proposed effect of a reviewer's rating variance on consumers’ willingness to accept the reviewer's recommendation. Studies 2 and 3 show that this effect can be attributed to perceptions regarding the reviewer's expertise. Moreover, this “variance-expert inference” effect is attenuated when the consumption experience of the reviewer is limited (Study 4) and when the consumers are familiar with the products (Study 5). The theoretical implications for the online review and persuasion literature and practical implications for online retailers are discussed.

在线评论已成为消费者购买决策的重要信息来源。本研究利用消费者专业知识和说服文献，提出当消费者在某个产品领域的历史评级显示出更大的差异时，消费者更愿意接受评论者的推荐。五个实验为这一假设和潜在过程提供了一致的支持。研究 1 测试了评论者的评级差异对消费者接受评论者建议的意愿的影响。研究 2 和 3 表明，这种影响可归因于对审稿人专业知识的看法。而且，当评论者的消费经验有限（研究 4）和消费者熟悉产品（研究 5）时，这种“方差专家推断”效应会减弱。讨论了在线评论和说服文献的理论意义以及对在线零售商的实际意义。