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The Influences of Negativity and Review Quality on the Helpfulness of Online Reviews

Building on the interpersonal evaluation theory in social psychology, this study explores the existence of a negativity bias in evaluating the helpfulness of online reviews, i.e., whether users perceive a negative review to be more helpful than a positive review. An analysis of 7659 book reviews from Amazon.co.uk shows that a negativity bias disappears after controlling for moderating factors related to evaluation quality such as readability and length. The finding demonstrates that the negativity bias suggested by the social psychology literature is not readily applicable to consumer-generated online reviews. The study contributes to the theorization of word-of-mouth by exploring the qualitative characteristics of consumer-generated reviews in addition to their valence. The study also makes a theoretical contribution to information systems research by introducing and extending the interpersonal evaluation theory to online review research.