Review usefulness represents a vital indicator for evaluating the quality of online reviews in the tourism industry, and various heuristic cues have been recognized as determinants of this indicator. This study constructs a comprehensive conceptual framework based on the heuristic-systematic model to observe how two systematic cues, namely, review novelty and inconsistency, shape the perceived usefulness of reviews. Through an empirical analysis based on 1,744,693 reviews of 62,543 restaurants in the United States, we unveil a positive effect of review novelty on review usefulness but a negative effect of review inconsistency. We also underscore the moderating effects of several heuristic cues in the model, including review valence, reviewer expertise, and restaurant popularity. These results indicate that systematic and heuristic cues simultaneously and interactively determine review usefulness. The findings present theoretical implications to the literature and practical implications to hospitality professionals and designers/managers of review platforms.

评论有用性是评估旅游业在线评论质量的重要指标，各种启发式线索已被认为是该指标的决定因素。本研究构建了一个基于启发式系统模型的综合概念框架，以观察评论新颖性和不一致性这两个系统线索如何塑造评论的感知有用性。通过基于美国 62,543 家餐厅的 1,744,693 条评论的实证分析，我们揭示了评论新颖性对评论有用性的积极影响，但评论不一致的负面影响。我们还强调了模型中几个启发式线索的调节作用，包括评论效价、评论者专业知识和餐厅受欢迎程度。这些结果表明，系统和启发式线索同时且交互地决定了评论的有用性。研究结果对文献具有理论意义，对酒店专业人士和评论平台的设计者/经理具有实践意义。