Effects Of Emotions On The Perceived Helpfulness Of Online Reviews

The development of e-commerce has brought people into a new shopping era——“all-people online shopping” era.However,in the “all-people online shopping” era,the availability of hundreds of reviews provides more information to consumers,but it also creates problems such as information overload.Consumers may be “lost” in their ability to quickly and effectively identify valuable reviews,which makes purchase decision become difficult.Therefore,exploring the helpfulness of online reviews has become an important research topic.Although many scholars have done a lot of research on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews,but there were some differences in the research findings among different scholars.So there are still some inconclusive factors on the helpfulness of online reviews.This study finds that emotion is an important factor affecting consumer behavior.Although scholars abroad have studied the relationship between emotion and helpfulness of reviews,but they have only studied from the perspective of a single mediator and similar products.Domestic research on the helpfulness of emotions and reviews is still relatively lacking.Therefore,one side,this study explores whether emotions can influence consumers' perception of the helpfulness of reviews;on the other side,studying products from different degrees of involvement,we explored the helpfulness of consumer perception of online reviews under different levels of product involvement and emotions.First of all,this research introduces the related theories and research progress of emotions,online reviews,perceived helpfulness,and puts forward hypotheses based on them.We construct a conceptual model of the impact of positive and negative emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews.Second,this study uses scenario simulation experiments to conduct research.The experiment is based on the form of questionnaire,and online investigation is conducted by means of an online investigation platform.Finally,727 effective experimental data are obtained.We use the SPSS20.0 analysis software,and the research hypothesis and the conceptual model of this paper are verified by paired sample T-test,regression analysis and variance analysis.Research result indicates: First of all,the strong positive emotions(happy)in consumer-recognized online reviews are more helpful than positive moderate emotions(hope)in positive emotions.Under the product of high and low degree of involvement,“certainty of expression” and “cognitive efforts” all have mediating effects of emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews.Second,under negative emotions,there is no difference in the impact of the two negative emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews under high-involvement products." Certainty of expression " and "cognitive effort" mediate the effect of emotion on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews.Under low-involvement products,consumer-perceived online negative reviews have higher levels of strong negative emotions(anger)than negative moderate emotions(worry);"Cognitive effort" mediates the effect of emotion on the perceived usefulness of online reviews,but the "certainty of expression" mediation is not significant.Third,online reviews of consumer-perceived low-involvement products are more helpful in products with the same mood and different degree of involvement.Finally,this paper puts forward the recommendations of the research findings and the future prospects.We hope that this study will help consumers and managers to better understand the helpfulness of online reviews and improve their ability to use online reviews.It can help consumers to identify helpful reviews information quickly and effectively;And it also can help managers strengthen the management of online reviews,so as to gradually improve their marketing strategies and promote product sales.