Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Information & Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/im

Assessing the product review helpfulness: Affective-Cognitive evaluation T

and the moderating effect of feedback mechanism
Mengxiang Lia,1,*, Pu Huangb,1
a
Department of Finance and Decision Sciences, School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University, 34 Renfrew Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
b
Cloud & Smart Industries Group, Tencent Holdings Limited, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Product review length has been demonstrated as one of the key factors that influence the product review
Product review helpfulness helpfulness. However, we have little knowledge of a deeper understanding on how consumers process the
Product review length product review length to assess product review helpfulness. Anchoring on the human’s affective-cognitive model
Product review author’s response of decision-making and the prominent coping approaches, this research revisits this key issue from consumers’
Inverted U-shape relationship
affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing perspective. Our findings show that (1) consumers apply both
Affect-oriented processing
Cognition-oriented processing
the affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing to assess the helpfulness of product review, (2) a sig-
nificant inverted U-shape relationship between the review length and the review helpfulness, and interestingly,
(3) such a relationship is further moderated by whether the product review author has provided a response to
consumers’ comments. These findings not only provide further robust evidence to the consideration of both
product review length and feedback, but also suggest a refinement of the underlying mechanism on how con-
sumers process product review length to assess product review helpfulness.

1. Introduction review’s disposition perspective. For example, researchers have found

Product review helpfulness, which is represented by the votes from
consumers who assess whether a particular product review is helpful for
facilitating consumers’ online shopping decision, has been demon-
strated as one of the key research topics in the digital commerce context
[1]. Online product review is an indispensible information source that
may provide useful information to consumers to process [2]. Consumers
could retreive useful information from either the review content or the
communicative interaction between product review author and other
consumers in the form of posting comments attached to the focal pro-
duct review. On the basis of processing of information retrieved from
product review, consumers then evaluate whether the product review is
helpful or not. In this regard, consumers’ evaluation of product review
helpfulness is a decision-making behavior with the processing of in-
formation from product review. Both researchers and practitioners alike
have strong interests to understand what factor influences consumers’
assessment of product review helpfulness and how such an impact
happens?
The extant literature of online product review helpfulness has made
significant advancement in understanding what factors influence con-
sumers’ evaluation of product review helpfulness from the product
the review valence, review quality, and review length have salient in-
fluence on the product review helpfulness [3]. Among them, re-
searchers have reached a consensus that the product review length is
the primitive information retrieved from product review when con-
sumers are processing the product review [4]. Moreover, the product
review length has a significant impact on consumers’ evaluation of
product review helpfulness [2,5]. However, from the information pro-
cessing perspective, we have little knowledge of a deeper understanding
on the underlying mechanism of how consumers process the product
review length so as to evaluate the product review helpfulness. As a
result, the extant literature yielded mixed findings [2,6]. For example,
Baek and her colleagues found the product review length has a mono-
tonous positive relationship with product review helpfulness [7]. The
other researchers, however, observed an inverted U-shape relationship
between them [8]. Thus, to reconcile the inconsistent findings in prior
literature and dig deeper to understand the underlying mechanism of
how consumers process the product review length to assess the online
product review helpfulness, we intend to examine two important re-
search questions: (1) What is the impact of the product review length on
product review helpfulness? (2) How consumers process the product review
length to evaluate the product review helpfulness?

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mengxiangli@hkbu.edu.hk (M. Li), vivipuhuang@tencent.com (P. Huang).
1
Both authors contribute to this paper equally.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2020.103359
Received 25 February 2019; Received in revised form 26 July 2020; Accepted 29 July 2020
Available online 15 August 2020
0378-7206/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M. Li and P. Huang
To this end, one possible solution is to find a pertinent theoretical
explanation that harmonizes the mixed research findings. This idea is
driven by Ullmann’s argument on the theoretical development for re-
solving the inconsistent findings [9]. As Ullmann argued, a lack (of
inclusiveness) in theory is one of the main reasons for the inconsistent
findings. Elaborately, prior researchers mainly anchored on either the
cognitive decision-making theories or mental load theories to in-
vestigate the utilities of product review length for interpreting the
linear relationship (or nonlinear relationship) between itself and the
product review helpfulness [2,6]. Although these findings collectively
imply that consumers do not exclusively conduct rational information
processing when processing product review length to assess the product
review helpfulness [10], we still have little knowledge on whether
consumers apply both the rational and irrational information proces-
sing of product review length concurrently. Moreover, if they do, how
would such a process influence the consumers’ evaluation of product
review helpfulness? To be more specific, research from decision science
discipline suggests that individuals’ decision-making activity usually
consists of both the cognitive and affective processes [11]. Thus, it is
promising to investigate how consumers process product review length
to evaluate product review helpfulness from both the cognitive and
affective perspectives at the same time. However, there is no prior study
that investigated this issue, thus leaving substantial room for im-
provement.
The lack of inclusiveness in theory is also echoed by the dearth of
studies on investigating the possible moderating effect that alters the
relationship between product review length and product review help-
fulness. As a direct complementary information source, the commu-
nicative comments from both the product review author and other
consumers provide strong support to cope with the deficiency of in-
formation processing resource [12]. Particularly, the product review
author’s response to other consumers’ comments determines the quality
of communication [13]. Thus, it may provide a salient moderating ef-
fect to influence the impact of product review length on product review
helpfulness. In this regard, we intend to examine the third research
question: (3) What is the impact of product review author’s response on the
consumers’ processing of product review length to evaluate the product re-
view helpfulness?
To address these research questions, we anchor on human’s affec-
tive-cognitive model of decision-making and the prominent coping
approaches to investigate the underlying mechanism of how consumers
process product review length to evaluate the product review help-
fulness. Moreover, we examine the moderating effect of product review
author’s response on such impact. Elaborately, the human’s affective-
cognitive model of decision-making is an inclusive theoretical frame-
work that takes a human’s affective and cognitive processing into
consideration for interpreting a human’s decision-making behavior. It
states that a human’s decision-making is influenced by both the affect-
oriented and cognition-oriented processing [11]. Anchoring on this
theoretical framework, we postulate that a different length of product
review would invoke various status of consumers’ affective and cogni-
tive information processing, thus leading to different impact on the
product review helpfulness. This theoretical reasoning is then re-
presented by an inverted U-shape relationship between product review
length and the product review helpfulness. In addition, we postulate
that this nonlinear relationship can be moderated by product review
author’s response with the consideration of the problem-centered and/
or emotion-centered coping [14]. The product review author’s response
would neutralize the negative impact on the review helpfulness and
make the relationship between product review length and product re-
view helpfulness to be monotonously linear.
By conducting a controlled laboratory experiment (Study 1) and the
analysis of a field dataset (Study 2), we demonstrate that our hy-
potheses are supported. In this regard, this paper intends to provide
several contributions to researchers and practitioners. First, this paper
provides a theoretically sound explanation to understand how
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
consumers process product review length to evaluate the product re-
view helpfulness from the affect-oriented processing and cognition-or-
iented processing perspective. Second, this study demonstrates the
moderating effect of the product review author’s response. We also
provide a theoretical explanation on how this add-on IT artifact (e.g.,
commenting function in the product review system) shifts consumers’
evaluation performance for assessing the product review helpfulness.
Third, this paper provides a salient contribution to consolidate the di-
chotomized research findings on the impact of product review length on
product review helpfulness in prior studies. Fourth, this paper provides
actionable suggestions to practitioners with a low-cost and easy-to-de-
ploy plan for maintaining the product review helpfulness.
2. Literature review
2.1. Human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making
Consumers’ evaluation of product review helpfulness is a decision-
making activity [15]. It is because consumers who read the product
review need to process the information in the product review and judge
whether the review content can facilitate consumers to make an online
shopping decision [3]. According to the literature on decision sciences,
when conducting a decision-making activity, both of the consumers’
affect and cognition would influence the final decision and outcome
[16]. In this regard, the review of the human’s affective-cognitive
model of decision-making would provide a concrete theoretical basis
for understanding how consumers evaluate product review helpfulness.
The human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making is de-
veloped by Shiv and Fedorikhin in their seminal paper on examining
the conflict between heart and mind during the consumers’ decision-
making process [11]. This model is built upon Berkowitz’s theory of
how affect and cognition interact to influence a human’s behavior [17].
In particular, the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making
states that a human’s decision-making is constituted with two types of
mental methods of processing. The first method of processing is called
affect-oriented processing, which is likely to occur in a relatively au-
tomatic manner [18]. The affect-oriented processing will lead con-
sumers to have an affective reaction (e.g., sad and happy) to the deci-
sion-making activity. Then, the formulated affective reaction will have
an influence on the decision’s outcome [11]. The second method of
processing is termed as the cognition-oriented processing. It means
consumers would deliberatively use the cognitive resource to process
incoming information and make a decision [10].
According to the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making, the affect-oriented processing and cognition-oriented proces-
sing are exclusive with each other during the decision-making process
[11]. Being exposed to a decision-making task, users will execute these
types of processing methods selectively with the consideration of the
availability of information processing resource. If the information
processing resource is sufficient, both processing methods will be exe-
cuted to make a decision. In particular, affect-oriented processing leads
to a rapid assessment of the affective significance of the decision-
making task [19]. Then, the cognition-oriented processing is activated
for generating more solid supporting reasons to make a decision. Con-
versely, if the information processing resource is not sufficient, the
cognition-based processing will be restrained and the affective reaction
from the affect-oriented processing will dominate the impact on deci-
sion outcomes [11].
The human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making can be
seamlessly adopted from the decision science discipline to examine the
impact of product review length on product review helpfulness with the
consideration of consumers’ affect-oriented and cognition-oriented
processing in a holistic manner. The consideration of a dual schematic
mental processing of this model is aligned with other seminal dual
process theories of human’s information processing in psychology and
social psychology discipline [20]. For example, the heuristic-systematic
M. Li and P. Huang
model proposed a dual-process model of information processing in the
human’s decision-making activity [21]. Another important dual-process
model, elaboration likelihood model, describes how users rely on dif-
ferent routes (central route or/and peripheral route) in their mind to
process informational stimuli for decision-making [22].
At the same time, the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making differs from these widely used theories by shedding light on the
interaction between affect and cognition during the decision-making
process [23]. In particular, this model adopts the human’s available
information processing resource as a regulator to govern the interplay
between affect-oriented processing and cognition-oriented processing.
In this regard, the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making can provide an inclusive theoretical foundation to investigate
how the product review helpfulness is being evaluated by consumers
from both affective and cognitive perspectives.
2.2. The product review length and product review helpfulness
Drawn upon the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making, we could explicate how consumers apply either affect-oriented
processing or cognition-oriented processing to evaluate the impact of
product review length on product review helpfulness.
2.2.1. Affect-oriented processing
As illustrated in the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making, affect-oriented processing occurs automatically in regard to the
exposure of decision tasks [16]. It results in preattentive action ten-
dencies on a rapid assessment of the affective significance of the deci-
sion tasks [18]. It is to be noted that this kind of affect is directly in-
duced by the product review itself, not the other kinds of affect that is
carried over from other sources such as the emotional terms in the
product review content [24]. In this regard, the affect-oriented pro-
cessing is centered on examining the affect that is being induced by the
exposure of the primitive information of product review, such as the
length of a product review.
There is no prior study that considered the impact of affect-oriented
processing when examining the product review helpfulness. Instead,
most of the extant literature examined the sentiment-induced emotion
and its impact on consumers’ perception of product review helpfulness
[25]. The sentiment-induced emotion is mainly originated from two
sources: the extremity of review rating as well as the sentimental terms
embedded in the product review content [26,27]. The extremity of
review rating in a product review represents the attitude extremity of
prior consumers who bought/used the related product [28]. For in-
stance, a very low rating (one star) means the extremely negative at-
titude toward the product; a moderate rating (three stars) shows the
middle-ground attitude [29]. Considering the nature of review rating
extremity, prior scholars found that it is an indicator of the perceived
quality of the related product, even when the underlying product
quality is controlled [30]. Thus, the extremity of review rating can
invoke the sentiment-induced emotion of consumers when reading the
product review. Sentimental terms refer to the particular word(s) that
represent the emotion of the consumer who wrote the product review
[31], such as “pleased” and “concerned.” Yin and his colleagues ex-
amined the impact of sentimental terms on product review helpfulness
evaluation [25]. They demonstrated that the sentimental terms could
result in spillover effects on consumers’ judgment and behavior. Con-
sequently, consumers, who are influenced by the sentimental terms in a
product review, intend to make a biased evaluation of product review
helpfulness.
Although many studies have been conducted, prior studies ne-
glected the impact of affect that associates with the evaluation activity
of product review helpfulness [10]. A predominant yet fully disclosed
assumption in prior studies is that consumers will undertake a cognitive
method to process the sentiment-induced emotion in the product re-
view, such as the processing of review rating extremity and the
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
processing of sentimental terms [25]. However, as stated in the hu-
man’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making, online consumers
will automatically generate an affect toward the evaluation activity of
product review helpfulness [11]. This preattentive affect is formulated
by the stimuli of the low-order primitive information of a product re-
view, such as the product review length. As Ullman discussed, the
“crude and primitive” affect could result in affective reactions and ac-
tion tendencies (approaching or avoiding) toward the decision task
[32]. Applying the affect-oriented processing in the research context of
product review helpfulness, we would expect that the short product
review will invoke a favorable affect toward the evaluation task [33].
Conversely, with the growth of product review length, we conceive that
consumers will gradually generate an unfavorable affect toward the
evaluation of product review helpfulness because consumers usually
feel unhappy and/or distracted when given a lengthy product review
[34].
2.2.2. Cognition-oriented processing
The cognition-oriented processing refers to the consumers’ assess-
ment of product review helpfulness based on the rational interpretation
of product review’s disposition [8]. When conducting the cognition-
oriented processing to evaluate the product review helpfulness, con-
sumers examine whether the information provided in the product re-
view can facilitate them to make a reasonable purchase decision.
In contrast to the small number of extant studies on affect-oriented
processing, there are several studies in the extant literature that focused
on consumers’ cognitive evaluation of product review length and the
subsequent judgment on its helpfulness [3]. The central thesis of these
studies states that consumers use systematic information processing to
examine product review content. In this regard, consumers would treat
the product review length as a proxy of product review content.
Many researchers concurred that the product review length has a
significant impact on the product review helpfulness. However, dif-
ferent researchers hold varying opinions about how the product review
length influences the product review helpfulness. In general, there are
two streams of research studies in the extant literature. The first stream
of studies holds the belief that product review length has a monotonous
relationship with the product review helpfulness. The underlying logic
of these studies is that a higher level of product review length indicates
the product review has more content. In addition, more content usually
enhances the likelihood of collecting helpful information from the
product review. Subsequently, the product review helpfulness can be
secured.
Building upon the underlying logic, prior researchers in this stream
of research took a step forward to study the latent construct that re-
presents the review content dispositions, such as review content ob-
jectivity [35] and review content diagnosticity [36]. Among them, re-
view content diagnosticity plays a major role in shaping consumers’
perception toward the review helpfulness [2]. The review content di-
agnosticity means the extent to which review content discriminates
between alternative interpretations of a problem and possible solutions
to it. According to this definition, the underlying rationale of the re-
lationship between review content diagnosticity and review helpfulness
lies in how the product review content empowers consumers with the
discrimination ability for choosing a product out of many alternatives.
The discrimination ability is a high-order cognitive construct for in-
terpreting review helpfulness. This high-order construct can be ex-
emplified by the low-order product review dispositions, such as the
length of a product review [37]. According to a seminal study con-
ducted by Mudambi and Schuff, product review length can significantly
enhance the content diagnosticity of a particular review, thus leading to
a high level of product review helpfulness [2]. Other studies had also
made a similar finding on the positive relationship between product
review length and product review helpfulness [7,38]. From the product
review readers’ perspective, a long product review means a high pos-
sibility of acquiring useful information from reading the review for
M. Li and P. Huang
making an informed decision. In the meantime, a long product review
usually contains more statements of the evaluation of the related pro-
duct. In this regard, long product reviews would reduce consumers’
uncertainty of decision-making, bring more evidence for discriminating
a product from other alternatives, and increase consumers’ confidence
in making a shopping decision. Consequently, a large value of product
review length will lead to an improved evaluation outcome of product
review helpfulness.
The second stream of studies, however, believe that consumers’
cognition-oriented processing on product review helpfulness may not
always be positive with the increase of product review length [39]. This
conception is originated from the research on human’s bounded in-
formation processing capacity [6]. The gist of these studies states that
the increase of product review content could bring favorable support to
the review helpfulness evaluation, but only up to a point. For example,
Schindler and Bickart [8] examined the relationship between the
number of statements in product review content and review help-
fulness. They found that the maximum of quantity rule in conversation
research sheds light on the negative influence of the excessive length of
a product review. In other words, providing more information in a
product review may lead to consumers’ confusion when interpreting the
review content [40]. As a result, the product review helpfulness will be
impaired. The nonpositive, nonlinear relationship between product
review length and product review helpfulness is also demonstrated by
the findings from behavioral science studies, in which the researchers
found that the limited working memory of consumers would result in
the inferior impact on review helpfulness perception [41].
In summary, we reviewed the prior literature of product review
length and product review helpfulness from the theoretical lens of a
human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making [11]. We found
that there are several significant theoretical gaps in the extant litera-
ture. First, prior research findings are not consistent, which signals a
substantial room for improvement in terms of theoretical development
[42]. Second, prior studies ignored the consumers’ affect on the eva-
luation task of product review helpfulness [43]. Third, prior studies do
not consider the joint impact of consumers’ affective and cognitive
evaluation [44]. All these gaps urge us to make an evaluation of the
impact of product review length on product review helpfulness from the
perspective of consumers’ affect-oriented and cognition-oriented pro-
cessing.
2.3. Product review author’s response as a coping method
Based on the literature review of prior studies on product review
helpfulness, under some conditions, either the consumers’ affect-or-
iented processing or cognition-oriented processing may have unfavor-
able outcomes. To attenuate the impairment on the review helpfulness
evaluation, the online shopping platforms and the product review au-
thors strive to develop more opportunities to make effective commu-
nication with the consumers to improve their learning and evaluation
with the focal product review. Among many attempts, the review
commenting function plays a pivotal role in the conventional online
product review system.
The product review commenting function is an important IT artifact
that enables a sustainable conversation between consumers and the
product review author. In the conventional product review system,
consumers would make comments on a product review by using the
review commenting function. The product review author can also use
the same function to reply to consumers’ comments. The conversation
between consumers and product review author is logged and it is dis-
played along with the product review. Consumers can easily access the
review commenting function and find the comments made by other
consumers and the responses made by the product review author when
reading the product review. In this scenario, the product review au-
thor’s response would represent as an approach for alleviating negative
impacts toward the product review helpfulness evaluation from both
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
the problem-centered and emotion-centered coping perspectives [45].
The problem-centered coping approach refers to the approaches
that aim in changing the person-environment realities behind negative
outputs. The product review author’s response could bring in additional
information to mitigate consumers’ uncertainty toward the claims and/
or statements in the product review [46]. The product review author’s
response usually aims at addressing the specific questions/concerns
raised by other product review readers. In this regard, the existence of
product review author’s response could guide the consumers’ attention
to the most critical/popular evaluation criteria for the purchase deci-
sion, thus leading to the effective utilization of the product review [47].
The emotion-centered coping approach means the approaches of
changing consumers’ emotional state. The product review author’s re-
sponse is a positive signal of maintaining interaction between the
communicative parties. Prior researchers found that the repeated
failure to respond typically leads to a bad impression of the commu-
nication recipients, which eventually results in the termination of
communication [13]. In this regard, the product review author’s re-
sponse is a vital signal of the intention of maintaining communication
[48].
In addition, the product review author’s response represents the
willingness of having proactive communication, particularly for the
communication initiator. Although the content of a response is not
predictable, prior scholars observed that the response typically shows
the communicative parties will respond to others, and they will address
the content of preceding messages [49]. This reason is particularly vi-
able in the online environment, in which no one is obligated to reply to
others’ comments/questions. If the communicative parties respond to
others, then the response could provide a strong justification for their
willingness to communicate.
Moreover, product review author’s response could indicate the in-
terpersonal affect to the other communicative parties. For example,
researchers found the communicative parties’ response shows the
communicative parties’ interest between them [50]. Moreover, the re-
sponse represents respectful communication. People will perceive
courtesy and respect of the others when the response is present [51].
Consequently, they will generate positive affect toward the commu-
nicative parties. As a result, the negative feeling will be compensated by
having the response. In a similar vein, consumers’ negative feeling
would be compensated emotionally by having the response of product
review author in the product review helpfulness research context.
Research on the impact of product review author’s response in the
review commenting function has been neglected in the extant litera-
ture. The existing studies mainly focus on the features of product review
(e.g., review depth, review readability, and review age) [25,42], review
rating (e.g., negativity bias and positivity bias) [38], and product re-
view author’s informational cues (e.g., reviewer expertise and reviewer
social network) [52,53]. However, the review commenting function is
an indispensable component in the conventional online review system,
and it is often displayed next to the review content. Thus, its impact
cannot be easily ignored. Our study fills the research gap by in-
vestigating the moderating role of the product review author’s response
in the review commenting function. It will highlight how the add-on IT
artifact shifts consumers’ behavior when interacting with the online
review system in the digital shopping platform.
3. Research model and hypotheses
Based on a human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making,
we propose the following overarching thesis of this paper. Fig. 1 pre-
sents the research framework of this paper.
The product review length will have an inverted U-shape relationship
with the product review helpfulness. The inverted U-shape relationship will
become a positive monotonous relationship if the product review author
provides a response to consumers’ comments. These phenomena can be ex-
plained by the joint consideration of consumers’ affect-oriented and
M. Li and P. Huang
Fig. 1. Research framework.
cognition-oriented processing as well as the problem-centered and emotional-
centered coping approach of the product review author’s response.
3.1. Main effect
Applying the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making
to the product review helpfulness research context, we posit that con-
sumers would adaptively use the affect-oriented processing and/or the
cognition-oriented processing to evaluate the impact of product review
length on product review helpfulness. In addition, the application of
these two types of mental processing would not lead to a monotonous
relationship between the product review length and product review
helpfulness. Our statement is counterintuitive and different from the
findings of some prior studies. To elaborate our conception, we anchor
on three typical types of product review length that have been studied
in the extant literature, namely short product review, moderately long
product review, excessively long product review, and develop our hy-
potheses from the affective-cognitive processing perspective.
3.1.1. In the short product review condition
According to the literature on a human’s mental processing and
decision-making [54], short product review does not consume a sig-
nificantly large volume of a human’s information processing resource
[55]. In this regard, based on the human’s affective-cognitive model of
decision-making, online consumers will execute both affect-oriented
processing and cognition-oriented processing for assessing the help-
fulness of product review when they have enough information proces-
sing resource. Meanwhile, the cognition-oriented processing will play a
more important role in determining the overall evaluation outcome
[11].
Based on the theoretical foundation, we would expect that the on-
line consumers’ affect-oriented processing occurs automatically once
the evaluation task is initiated [11]. After that, online consumers’ af-
fect-oriented processing will lead to a favorable affective assessment
toward the product review helpfulness evaluation. It is because the
length of short product review usually does not lead to a cost of a
significant amount of information processing resource. Moreover, on-
line consumers usually tend to use their information processing re-
source in an economical way. They favor the task that requires minimal
information processing resource [56]. As a result, short product review
often invokes a favorable affective inclination toward the evaluation of
product review helpfulness [11].
In the short product review condition, online consumers have en-
ough information processing resource so that they have high possibi-
lities to make intensive cognition-oriented processing of the product
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
review content and generate an informed evaluation of the product
review helpfulness [57]. However, we argue for a counterintuitive
statement in which online consumers cannot develop a favorable eva-
luation of product review helpfulness, even though they have enough
information processing resource in the short product review condition.
The underlying rationale lies in the limited content provided by the
short product review. Although having enough information processing
resource, online consumers are unable to generate many meaningful
statements from the interpretation of the review content to support the
evaluation of product review helpfulness [38], thus leading to un-
favorable cognition-oriented processing performance on the product
review helpfulness evaluation. ceteris paribus, short product review
cannot carry more messages than other longer product reviews for
evaluating the product review helpfulness. As a result, we posit that the
short product review leads to low level of consumers’ evaluation on
product review helpfulness.
3.1.2. In the moderately long product review condition
In this condition, the volume of product review content, which is
represented by the product review length, will not deplete online
consumers’ information processing resource [55]. According to the
human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making, both the affect-
oriented and cognition-oriented processing will be utilized for evalu-
ating the product review helpfulness. In addition, the cognition-or-
iented processing will play a dominant role in determining the overall
evaluation outcome [11].
From the affect-oriented processing perspective, the moderately
long product review does not generate positive affective inclination
toward the assessment task of the product review helpfulness, and it
does not result in negative affective inclination [58]. The length of
moderately long product review represents a signal that indicates on-
line consumers need to use a considerable amount of information
processing resource to process the product review content for evalu-
ating the product review helpfulness. As Fiske argued, conventional
consumers are the “cognitive miser” [59]. If an evaluation task requires
more information processing resource, then consumers will not have a
positive affective inclination toward the task. However, not having a
positive affective inclination does not mean online consumers hold a
negative affective inclination toward the product review helpfulness
evaluation [58]. In the condition of processing a moderately long
product review, the expected cost of information processing resource
does not exceed the maximum limit of the consumers’ information
processing resource. In this regard, consumers will not generate nega-
tive affect on the evaluation task [33]. According to the human’s af-
fective-cognitive model of decision-making, the non-positive/non-
M. Li and P. Huang
negative outcome of affect-oriented processing will not bring any po-
sitive nor negative affective influence on the cognition-oriented pro-
cessing of the product review content for evaluating its helpfulness. As a
result, the overall evaluation of the product review helpfulness rests on
the performance of online consumers’ cognition-oriented processing
[11].
From the cognition-oriented processing perspective, we argue that
online consumers have sufficient information processing resource when
facing a moderately long product review [60]. According to the hu-
man’s affective-cognitive model of decision-making, online consumers
can conduct a deliberative assessment on the product review content as
well as the product review helpfulness. Compared with the short pro-
duct review, the moderately long product review pertains to a high
possibility of having useful statements and meaningful contents in a
product review [8]. In this regard, the more words provided in a pro-
duct review (which means the length of product review is longer), the
higher possibilities that online consumers would identify useful state-
ments from the product reviews for facilitating their online shopping.
As a result, ceteris paribus, online consumers will make a favorable
evaluation outcome on the product review helpfulness. Thus, we posit
that the moderately long product review would have a positive impact
on consumers’ evaluation of the product review helpfulness.
3.1.3. In the excessively long product review condition
The excessively long product review will drain off online consumers’
bounded information processing resource for interpreting the product
review content in the short term [55]. Based on the human’s affective-
cognitive model of decision-making, if the online consumers’ informa-
tion processing resource is not sufficient, the cognition-oriented pro-
cessing will be restrained and its performance will be limited [11]. At
the same time, the affective reaction from online consumers’ affect-
oriented processing will dominate the evaluation of the impact of the
length of product review on product review helpfulness.
From the affect-oriented processing perspective, the length of ex-
cessively long product review provides an instant signal that indicates
online consumers need to spend extensive information processing re-
source to process the product review content. It will lead online con-
sumers to generate a negative affect on the task [61]. For example, Pan
and other colleagues found that users usually feel “unsatisfied,” “fru-
strated,” and/or “agitated” with the demanding task that requires a
significant amount of information processing resource [62]. Conse-
quently, users become unwilling to read the content or tend to abandon
the task right away [63]. In a similar vein, the length of an excessively
long product review will invoke online consumers’ negative affective
inclination toward the interpretation of the product review content. It
subsequently inhibits the possibility of performing a comprehensive
evaluation of the product review content, which ultimately brings a
negative impact on the product review helpfulness evaluation.
According to the human’s affective-cognitive model of decision-
making, if the consumers’ information processing resource is not suf-
ficient, the cognition-based processing will be restrained and the af-
fective reaction from affect-oriented processing will dominate the im-
pact on decision outcomes [11]. In the excessively long product review
condition, considering the negative affect generated toward the de-
manding job on interpreting the excessively long product review as well
as the restrained performance of cognition-oriented processing of the
product review content in a holistic manner, online consumers will
have an unfavorable assessment outcome toward the product review
helpfulness. ceteris paribus, we posit the excessively long product re-
view leads to a low level of consumers’ evaluation on product review
helpfulness.
After consolidating our theoretical reasoning in the short/moder-
ately long/excessively long product review conditions, we posit that
consumers will apply both the affect-oriented processing and cognition-
oriented processing to assess the product review helpfulness. In addi-
tion, we would develop an overarching hypothesis that posits a
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
nonlinear relationship between the length of product review and the
product review helpfulness.
H1a: The consumers would leverage affect-oriented processing to process
the impact of product review length on the product review helpfulness.
H1b: The consumers would leverage cognition-oriented processing to
process the impact of product review length on the product review help-
fulness.
H1c: The length of a product review has an inverted U-shape relationship
with the product review helpfulness.
3.2. Moderating effect
The provision of product review author’s response to consumers’
comments on the product review would serve as an important mod-
erator for influencing the relationship between the length of product
review and product review helpfulness. The product review author’s
response could provide a moderating effect for two reasons: First, the
product review author’s response could act as a problem-centered ap-
proach to mitigate online consumers’ concerns on the uncertainty of
interpreting the content of product review, thus bringing a favorable
evaluation on the product review helpfulness (from the cognition-or-
iented processing perspective). Second, the product review author’s
response would provide an emotion-centered approach to rectify the
negative affects that emerged when online consumers process the pro-
duct review and evaluate the product review helpfulness (from the af-
fect-oriented processing perspective) [14]. In the following subsection,
we elaborate our theoretical reasoning of the moderating effect in
aligning with the hypothesis development fashion of the main effect.
3.2.1. In the short product review and moderately long product review
conditions
In these two conditions, the length of the product review does not
deplete the consumers’ bounded information processing resource [11].
In this regard, the moderating effect of product review author’s re-
sponse may not be salient because there is no significant hindrance to
cope with on the relationship between the product review length and
product review helpfulness. From the affect-oriented processing per-
spective, the provision of product review author’s response could bring
favorable affect. Online consumers would perceive the product review
author is benevolent and is willing to communicate and share his/her
option in a readily comprehended form [13]. In this regard, consumers
will generate a favorable affect toward the evaluation of product review
helpfulness, thus leading to a positive inclination to conduct the cog-
nition-oriented processing [11]. From the cognition-oriented processing
perspective, the product review author’s response will bring additional
knowledge that is highly related to the product review and consumers’
comments. It will strengthen the consumers’ capacity to have a better
understanding of the product review content. As a result, it will im-
prove the performance of product review helpfulness evaluation. In this
regard, the length of a product review is positively associated with the
product review helpfulness.
3.2.2. In the excessively long product review condition
The provision of product review author’s response, however, will
make a substantial change to the relationship between the length of
product review and product review helpfulness in the condition of
having an excessively long product review. Based on the hypothesis
development in the main effect subsection, online consumers would
experience negative affect when processing the excessively long pro-
duct review as well as the deficiency of information processing re-
source. To cope with these negative issues, the provision of product
review author’s response could benefit the impact of the length of
product review on product review helpfulness from both the emotion-
centered coping and problem-centered coping aspects [14]. From the
emotion-centered coping perspective, the product review author’s re-
sponse could strengthen a favorable affect on the product review. As a
M. Li and P. Huang
result, consumers will have a positive inclination to the evaluation of
product review helpfulness.
From the problem-centered coping perspective, the provision of
product review author’s response could enhance the consumers’ ability
to digest the product review content within the bounded information
processing resource for two reasons: First, having the product review
author’s response enhances the possibility of highlighting the key
claims and/or statements made by the product review author [64].
Second, the product review author’s response could address the specific
questions/concerns raised by product review readers, thus leading to an
effective interpretation of the product review. In this regard, the pro-
vision of product review author’s response creates a “shortcut” for
understanding the product review content [65]. Even though the length
of a product review is excessively long, consumers are guided to learn
from the product review effectively with the provision of product re-
view author’s response. As a result, online consumers’ information
processing resource is conserved and they can process additional in-
formation in the product review content. ceteris paribus, considering
both the emotion-centered and problem-centered benefits provided by
the product review author’s response, the length of the product review
will not have a significant negative impact on the product review
helpfulness.
In summary, the provision of product review author’s response
could significantly improve the impact of the product review length on
the product review helpfulness in the excessively long product review
condition. Considering the theoretical reasoning of the moderating ef-
fect in short/moderately long/excessively long product review condi-
tions collectively, we posit:
H2a: The product review author’s response has a moderating effect on
the affect-oriented processing of product review length
H2b: The product review author’s response has a moderating effect on
the cognition-oriented processing of product review length
H2c: The provision of product review author’s response will moderate the
relationship between product review length and product review helpfulness.
In particular: the relationship will shift from an inverted U-shape relationship
to a monotonous positive relationship.
4. Research methodology
We conducted two consecutive studies to test our hypotheses.
Specifically, we designed a controlled laboratory experiment (Study 1)
to investigate the relationship between the length of product review
and product review helpfulness from the consumers’ affect-oriented and
cognition-oriented processing perspective. We also examined the
moderating role of product review author’s response in the laboratory
experiment. Next, we extended our findings from the laboratory ex-
periment to a generalized online environment in which we adopted the
review-level data from a real online shopping website to delineate the
relationship between the length of product review and product review
helpfulness as well as the moderating role of product review author’s
response (Study 2). The consolidation of the research findings from
these two studies would provide theoretically solid and empirically
appropriate implications to the existing scholarly work and conven-
tional practice alike.
4.1. Study 1
4.1.1. Experiment design
A 2 × 3 factorial laboratory experiment was designed (see Table 1),
in which the 2 represents the status of providing product review au-
thor’s response in the review commenting function (with or without),
and the 3 represents three different lengths of a product review (short,
moderately long, and excessively long). In total, there were six treat-
ment groups in Study 1. In each of the treatment groups, we also pro-
vided two scenarios with the consideration of capturing the effect of
product type.
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Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
We did not control the consumers’ affect-oriented processing status
and cognition-oriented processing status because they were the latent
variables, which cannot be directly controlled with given manipulation
[66]. However, we measured the consumers’ affect-oriented processing,
cognition-oriented processing, and other subjective measures by
adopting questionnaires from prior literature (see Appendix A for de-
tails). These measurement items were embedded in a simulated online
shopping website. In this website, we provided two modules to parti-
cipants. The first module is an online product presentation module,
which presented descriptive product information to participants. The
product information in this module was first downloaded from a real
online shopping website. We then used a fictional brand and fictional
price to rule out the effect of difference on brand and price [67]. The
purpose of having such manipulation is to attenuate the contingent
effect of the price [68] and brand [69]. In this experiment, we used both
the search products and experience products as the target product in the
stimulated shopping website. The search products were an LED flat TV,
a professional GPS navigator, and a professional drilling machine. The
experience products were a professional headset, a professional fogless
mirror set, and a sports music player [2]. A pretest was conducted with
eleven volunteers for classifying these products. The Fleiss Kappa value
of the volunteers’ rating agreement (Kappa = 0.65) indicates a good
classification of the search product and experience product in our ex-
periment [70].
The second module is a product review presentation module, which
provided a product review and its related consumers’ comments to the
participants. The length of the product review was controlled with three
categories: short, moderately long, and excessively long. We first sur-
veyed over 10,000 product reviews from online shopping websites
about the review length and then took the first quantile, second
quantile, and third quantile as the reference points for the three types of
product review in our experiment. Next, we downloaded the product
reviews from a real online shopping website with the consideration of
these reference points. After that, we cleaned the identity information
and other unrelated information in the content of product reviews. In
general, the short product review has around 140 words. The moder-
ately long product review has around 1200 words and the excessively
long product review has around 4000 words.
We provided only the product review and related consumers’
comments in the “without product review author’s response” treatment
groups. In addition to this, we provided a product review author’s re-
sponse in the “with product review author’s response” treatment
groups. All the product reviews, consumers’ comments, and product
review author’s responses were downloaded from a real online shop-
ping website and then tailored to fit the research settings. For example,
we kept the length of consumers’ comments to be the same across dif-
ferent treatment groups. We controlled the valence of product review
by using the same star rating across different treatment groups [71]. We
also controlled the spillover effect of the sentimental terms/star rating
embedded in the product review content on the consumers’ affect to-
ward the evaluation of the product review helpfulness by screening the
unified and neutralized emotional terms and the star rating across
treatment groups [25]. In addition, we provided the same length of
product review author’s response across different product reviews in
the condition of “With product review author’s response.” In this re-
gard, the contingent effects of product review valence and the length of
comments and feedback can be controlled. Other than these manip-
ulations, the setting of the simulated website was set such that it was
like a conventional online shopping website.
In the experiment, a prologue was displayed to the participants
upon logging in the mockup website. After reading the prologue, par-
ticipants had an opportunity to try out the navigation of the simulated
shopping website and a practical task that mimics the main experiment
task. Then, participants proceeded to the main experiment tasks, in
which the two above-mentioned modules presented the descriptive
product information and product review, respectively. Once they
M. Li and P. Huang Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

Table 1
The experiment design.
With product review author’s response Without product review author’s response

Short product review Scenario 1: Search product Scenario 3: Search product

Scenario 2: Experience product Scenario 4: Experience product
Moderately long product review Scenario 5: Search product Scenario 7: Search product
Scenario 6: Experience product Scenario 8: Experience product
Excessively long product review Scenario 9: Search product Scenario 11: Search product
Scenario 10: Experience product Scenario 12: Experience product

Table 2
Descriptive statistics of the participants.
Construct Treatment group 1 Treatment group 2 Treatment group 3 Treatment group 4 Treatment group 5 Treatment group 6

Age 23.11 (4.64) 21.41 (2.84) 23.13 (3.07) 21.48 (2.29) 22.16 (2.07) 21.13 (4.05)
Gender Male: 26 Male: 27 Male: 25 Male: 24 Male: 26 Male: 25
Female: 3 Female: 2 Female: 4 Female: 5 Female: 3 Female: 4
Task involvement 4.40 (1.75) 4.67 (1.20) 4.74 (1.45) 4.91 (1.19) 4.83 (1.65) 4.79 (1.21)
Brand preference 5.00 (1.25) 4.68 (1.23) 4.37 (1.32) 5.03 (1.52) 4.92 (1.22) 4.85 (1.36)

finished an experiment task, participants were then asked to answer the
follow-up questionnaires. After that participants had the opportunity to
continue the next experiment task with a randomly selected product or
quit the experiment. The participants were not given a time limit during
the experiment with the consideration of the differences in the learning
speeds among the participants.
4.1.2. Participants
A total of 174 participants from a public university in the Asia-
Pacific region were recruited and they were randomly assigned to the
treatment groups, each having 29 participants (see Table 2). Among the
participants, 21 were females and 153 were male participants. These
participants were recruited through email and online advertisements.
We found that there is no significant difference between groups in terms
of the participants’ age (F = 2.14 and p > 0.10), gender ratio
( 2 = 2.77 and p > 0.10), online shopping frequency ( 2 = 1.09 and
p > 0.10), product review usage frequency ( 2 = 2.15 and p > 0.10),
product review composing frequency ( 2 = 3.11 and p > 0.10), task
involvement (F = 0.67 and p > 0.10), and brand preference (F = 1.66
and p > 0.10). After the experiment, each participant was given a
monetary incentive that was equivalent to USD 10.
4.1.3. Procedure
The experiment was conducted as follows. When participants ar-
rived at the lab room, they were randomly assigned to one desktop
terminal and logged in the system with the use of a designated account
(which differentiated the treatment groups). Subsequently, the parti-
cipants began the experiment with the sequence described in the ex-
periment design section. Participants were given the experiment pro-
logue that they were to make purchase decisions for themselves. Each of
them was asked to complete two shopping tasks: one is for a search
product and the other one is for an experience product. After com-
pleting the experiment, the participants were given the monetary in-
centive and dismissed.
4.1.4. Data analysis
4.1.4.1. Manipulation check. We conducted the manipulation check to
examine whether participants perceived the control over the length of
the product review correctly. During the experiment, participants were
asked to use a horizontal scrolling bar question to indicate their
perceived length of content after they read the product review. The
horizontal scrolling bar question has two labels “short product review”
and “excessively long product review” at two ends. Participants could
use the mouse to move the scrolling bar to a place inbetween the two
ends of this question where they perceived to be appropriate for
reflecting the product review length. At the same time, the
experimental system translated participants’ answer to a numerical
value, ranging from 0 to 1, in the backend database. This numerical
value was not presented to participants during the experiment. It was
for manipulation check purpose only. For example, if the scrolling bar is
close to “short product review” end, it means participants perceive the
product review to be short and the numerical value could be 0.3 in the
backend database.
We then examined if participants’ answers of this horizontal scrol-
ling bar question are aligned with the length of product review pro-
vided. As expected, the data analysis on the numerical value showed
that the manipulation of product review length was successful.
Participants perceived the short product review to be short
(Mean = 0.24 and SD = 0.09); the moderately long product review to
be in the middle range (Mean = 0.45 and SD = 0.08); and the ex-
cessively long product review to be long (Mean = 0.81 and SD = 0.50).
There is a significant difference between the three treatment conditions
(p < 0.001). The manipulation check on the provision of product re-
view author’s response was also successful.
4.1.4.2. Measurement model. Except for the classical measure of
product review helpfulness, product type, and product review
author’s response [37], all other concepts are empirically measured
by adopting questionnaires from prior literature with a certain level of
adjustment (see Appendix A). Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics

Table 3
Convergent validity test results.
Items Mean (SD) AVE Cronbach’s α

Affect-oriented processing (Negative) 2 3.638 (1.771) 0.951 0.949

Affect-oriented processing (Positive) 2 3.886 (1.761) 0.941 0.937
Cognition-oriented processing 3 4.338 (1.799) 0.889 0.938
Cognitive processing load 5 3.718 (1.840) 0.878 0.966
Prior product knowledge 4 3.895 (1.596) 0.716 0.866

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M. Li and P. Huang Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

Table 4
Correlation matrix.
Construct 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Affect-oriented processing (Negative) 0.975

Affect-oriented processing (Positive) −0.738 0.970
Cognition-oriented processing −0.405 0.495 0.943
Review helpfulness −0.424 0.512 0.633 1.000
Review author’s response 0.009 −0.078 −0.029 0.041 1.000
Cognitive processing load 0.184 −0.022 0.387 0.125 0.028 0.937
Prior product knowledge −0.052 0.144 0.201 0.163 0.019 0.208 0.846
Product type 0.140 −0.134 −0.035 −0.020 0.189 0.157 0.016 1.000

Note: Values on the diagonal boxes represent the square roots of AVE.

Table 5
Cross loadings.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

AEN1 0.973 −0.699 −0.378 −0.394 0.010 0.192 −0.043 0.120

AEN2 0.978 −0.740 −0.411 −0.432 0.007 0.167 −0.057 0.152
AEP1 −0.734 0.971 0.490 0.506 −0.089 −0.043 0.130 −0.115
AEP2 −0.698 0.969 0.471 0.488 −0.061 0.002 0.149 −0.146
CE1 −0.352 0.443 0.939 0.562 0.015 0.400 0.205 −0.044
CE2 −0.388 0.490 0.947 0.613 −0.057 0.328 0.200 −0.041
CE3 −0.404 0.467 0.944 0.613 −0.036 0.368 0.165 −0.016
HELP −0.424 0.512 0.633 1.000 0.041 0.125 0.163 −0.020
RESP 0.009 −0.078 −0.029 0.041 1.000 0.028 0.019 0.189
CL1 0.197 −0.050 0.332 0.096 0.046 0.921 0.247 0.176
CL2 0.202 −0.048 0.316 0.085 0.037 0.925 0.200 0.159
CL3 0.172 −0.011 0.377 0.105 0.024 0.953 0.180 0.145
CL4 0.139 −0.011 0.391 0.147 −0.003 0.950 0.171 0.121
CL5 0.172 0.001 0.372 0.130 0.039 0.935 0.194 0.150
PK1 −0.014 0.099 0.217 0.123 0.019 0.269 0.839 −0.008
PK2 −0.015 0.132 0.203 0.147 0.031 0.221 0.904 0.048
PK3 −0.063 0.142 0.097 0.124 −0.096 0.163 0.749 −0.038
PK4 −0.080 0.114 0.162 0.154 0.091 0.072 0.883 0.040
TYPE 0.140 −0.134 −0.035 −0.020 0.189 0.157 0.016 1.000

and all the constructs’ AVE values and Cronbach’s alpha values exceed
the required threshold.
Besides, we performed the discriminate validity check (see Tables 4
and 5). The analysis results indicate that our measure of the key con-
structs is successful.
4.1.4.3. Results. In this study, we used a binomial question to capture
participants’ evaluation of product review helpfulness (“Was this
product review helpful to you? Yes or No”) [72]. In this regard, we
performed the logit regression with covariance to test whether
participants adopt the affect-oriented processing and cognition-
oriented processing to assess the impact of product review length on
the product review helpfulness. In addition, we tested the moderating
effect of product review author’s response in the logit regression model.
Table 6 shows the analysis results.
From Table 6, we can observe the salient evidence that supports the
participants adopted both affect-oriented processing and cognition-or-
iented processing when assessing the impact of product review length
on product review helpfulness (Model 2). Thus, H1a and H1b are sup-
ported. In addition, the significance of the interaction term in Model 3
shows that the product review author’s response has a moderating ef-
fect on attenuating the negative affect during the evaluation of product
review helpfulness. It demonstrates that the product review author’s
response has a moderating effect on the affect-oriented processing ap-
proach. In addition, the interaction term of cognition-oriented proces-
sing and product review author’s response in Model 3 is marginally
significant. It indicates that the provision of product review author’s
response may moderate the impact of product review length on the
product review helpfulness from the cognition-oriented processing
perspective.
To further verify the moderating role of product review author’s
response, we split the dataset by different treatment groups and applied
the logit regression to each subset. As shown in Table 7, when the
length of a product review is short, consumers usually have positive
affect-oriented processing of the product review helpfulness (positive
affect: β = 0.642 and p < 0.05). However, because of the limited vo-
lume of content, the short product review cannot lead to a significant
impact of cognition-oriented processing (β=-0.602, p > 0.05). This
situation can be improved by having the product review author’s re-
sponse. Consumers have positive affect-oriented processing toward the
product review helpfulness (positive affect: β = 2.013 and p < 0.05)
and the cognition-oriented processing is also significant (β = 1.129 and
p < 0.05).
When the length of a product review is moderately long, consumers
have a general negative affect-oriented processing (negative affect:
β = 1.524 and p < 0.05) due to the demands of processing more in-
formation mentally. At the same time, the increasing number of con-
tents in the product review can provide more information to the audi-
ence, thus leading to a significant impact of cognition-oriented
processing (β = 3.231 and p < 0.05). After having the product review
author’s response, consumers’ affect-oriented processing toward the
product review helpfulness becomes positive (positive affect: β = 1.981
and p < 0.05) and the cognition-oriented processing still have a salient
impact on the product review helpfulness (β = 3.603 and p < 0.05).
When the length of a product review is excessively long, the nega-
tive affect-oriented processing is engaged in assessing the product re-
view helpfulness when there is no product review author’s response
(negative affect: β = 1.440 and p < 0.05). However, the negative af-
fect can be switched to positive affect-oriented processing when pro-
viding the product review author’s response (positive affect: β = 0.744
and p < 0.05). It demonstrates a salient moderating role of product
review author’s response during the evaluation process of review

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M. Li and P. Huang Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

Table 6
Analysis results of hypotheses testing.
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Variable Control variables Without interaction Author’s response interaction

Affect-oriented processing (Negative) 0.088 0.358

Affect-oriented processing (Positive) 0.511*** 0.450**
Cognition-oriented processing 1.012*** 1.273***
Author’s response 0.511 0.541
Affect-oriented evaluation (Negative) ×Author’s response −0.556**
Affect-oriented processing (Positive) × Author’s response 0.199
Cognition-oriented processing × Author’s response 0.425*
Cognitive processing load −0.107 −0.206 −0.195
Product knowledge 0.185*** 0.106 0.147
Product type −0.152 0.390 0.395
Constant −0.695** −5.568*** −5.650***
LR chi2 12.32 205.18 212.85
Prob > chi2 0.006 0.000 0.000
Pseudo R2 0.026 0.434 0.450
Obs 348 348 348

Note: * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; and *** p < 0.01.

Table 7
Analysis results for each of treatment groups.
Short product review (N = 116) Moderately long product review (N = 116) Excessively long product review (N = 116)

With response Without response With response Without response With response Without response

Affect-oriented processing (Negative) 1.599 0.182 0.755 1.524** −0.003 1.440**

Affect-oriented processing (Positive) 2.013** 0.642** 1.981** −0.509 0.744** 0.439
Cognition-oriented processing 1.129** −0.602 3.603** 3.231** 0.731** 0.746**
Cognitive processing load −0.125 −0.038 −0.950 −0.374 −0.066 −0.715
Product knowledge −0.274 0.112 −0.357 1.105 0.276 −0.722
Product type −2.879 −1.328 1.421 2.256 0.779 3.835**
Constant −7.253** −5.849** −5.393 −8.679** −5.027 −6.558

Note: ** indicates p < 0.05.

Fig. 2. Affect-oriented processing performance.

helpfulness (see Figs. 2 and 3). Thus, H2a and H2b are supported.
We also calculated the product review helpfulness ratio for each
type of product review by following a classic method: the portion of the
positive votes against both positive and negative votes. Table 8 shows
the results. By comparing the helpfulness ratio between different types
of product review length, we found a trend that the product review
helpfulness will become arising from short product review to the
moderately long product review under the “no product review author’s
response” condition. Then, the product review helpfulness decreases
when the length of the product review is excessively long. Under the
“has product review author’s response” condition, however, the fluc-
tuation of the product review helpfulness is not as strong as it was
under the “no product review author’s response” condition (see Fig. 4).
In summary, the research findings from the laboratory experiment
provide general support to the argument that consumers would apply
both affect-oriented processing and cognition-oriented processing to

10
M. Li and P. Huang
Fig. 3. Cognition-oriented processing performance.
process product review length to evaluate product review helpfulness.
The moderating role of product review author’s response is also sup-
ported by the data analysis result.
4.1.5. Discussion
The findings of Study 1 provide solid support to our theoretical
explanation of the impact of product review length on product review
helpfulness. This study demonstrates that consumers do utilize both the
affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing for the evaluation of
product review helpfulness. This finding complements most of the prior
studies on product review helpfulness, which presumed that the con-
sumers’ evaluation of product review helpfulness is solely based on
their rational thinking [25]. In this regard, Study 1 opens a new avenue
toward a comprehensive investigation of consumers’ online behavior
from both the affect- and cognition-processing perspectives. This study
also indicates that product review author’s response can act as a viable
coping method to attenuate the negative affective impact on the pro-
duct review helpfulness evaluation.
However, because of the limitation of the laboratory experiment
method, the categorical setting of product review length cannot provide
a refined quantitative validation of the remaining proposed hypotheses
(H1c, H2c). In addition, the laboratory experiment setting is not as
same as the real online shopping environment. Thus, the general-
izability of the research findings in Study 1 may not be strong. To ad-
dress these concerns, we conducted a second study to investigate the
impact of product review length and the moderating effect of product
review author’s response by analyzing product review data collected
from a real-world online shopping website.
4.2. Study 2
4.2.1. Data
We developed a web crawling program to collect a product review
from a leading online shopping platform. Specifically, for each of
Table 8
Descriptive statistics of the product review helpfulness.
Short product review
No product review author’s response
Yes: 18 No: 40
Product review helpfulness ratio 0.31
Has product review author’s response
Yes: 32 No: 26
Product review helpfulness ratio 0.55
11
Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
product reviews, we collected the data of review dispositions (e.g., re-
view title, review author name, review star rating, review content,
consumers’ comment, product review author’s response, etc.) and the
data of the related product (e.g., product name). The initial dataset
contains 2557 product reviews. We excluded the product reviews with
no product review helpfulness voting, thus leaving 2285 product re-
views in our sample set.
4.2.2. Key measures
4.2.2.1. Dependent variable. Product review helpfulness is the
dependent variable of this study. The website asks consumers “Was
this review helpful to you?” Then, consumers can select either “Yes” or
“No” to indicate their judgment toward the helpfulness of the product
review. Finally, the website shows the number of total votes and the
number of positive votes to the helpfulness of a review. For example, 23
of 34 people found this (review) helpful. Owing to the nature of the
voting mechanism, the dependent variable is measured by the
calculation of the proportion of the votes on “helpful review” against
the total votes. As a result, the dependent variable is a continuous
variable, ranging from 0 (nobody found the review helpful) to 1
(everyone who voted the review found it is helpful). The larger the
value, the more helpfulness of review is perceived by consumers.
4.2.2.2. Independent variable. The length of a product review is the
independent variable of this study. It is measured by counting the
number of words in the product review content. This measure is widely
used in most of the prior studies [27].
4.2.2.3. Moderator variable. The status of the provision of product
review author’s response is the moderator variable of this study. It is
a binomial variable, with the value of 0 (indicating there is no response
provided by the product review author) or 1 (indicating the product
review author provided responses). To generate the value of this
variable, we developed a text-matching program to compare the
Moderately long product review Excessively long product review
Yes: 38 No: 20 Yes: 27 No: 31
0.65 0.47
Yes: 44 No: 14 Yes: 40 No: 18
0.75 0.69
M. Li and P. Huang Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

Fig. 4. Product review helpfulness ratio.

Table 9 review helpfulness [73]. With the support of the identification

Descriptive statistics of sample set.
Variable Mean (SD) N = 2285
Product review helpfulness 0.633 (0.321)
Product review length 1306 (1575)
Rating in product review 2.9 (1.658)
Total votes 73 (312)
Product type Search product: 1354
Experience product: 931
Transaction certification badge With: 1514
Without: 771
Accreditation badge With: 1668
Without: 617
Word count in consumers’ comments 1549 (4636)
Word count in product review author’s response 402 (1936)
name of the product review author and the comment provider’s name of
the related product review.
4.2.2.4. Key control variables. Several control variables have been taken
into consideration, such as total votes on evaluating the product review
helpfulness, product type, transaction certification badge, accreditation
badge of the product review author, rating in the product review, word
count in the product review author’s response, and word count in the
consumers’ comments. The total votes on evaluating the review
helpfulness are collected by scraping the real value of the total votes
from the websites. By having this control variable, we attenuate the
concern on the winner circle bias (product reviews with more
accumulated votes get more attention than reviews with fewer votes)
[71]. The product type is measured by identifying whether the focal
product is a search product or experience product. Prior literature
demonstrated that a different product type would influence the
consumers’ perception of the review helpfulness [37]. To reduce this
concern, we add the product type as a control variable in our model.
The transaction certification badge is a third-party certification by
identifying whether the product review is based on a real purchase from
the website. If so, a “real transaction” badge will be placed along with
the review title. The accreditation badge of product review author is
granted to the authors who had made significant contribution to the
development of product review, such as “top 1000 reviewer.” Forman
and his colleagues found the originality identification information, such
as review author’s real name certification and real transaction
certification can significantly influence consumers’ rating toward the
information, consumers will perceive a review to be more helpful.
Thus, we include these control variables in our model to attenuate the
possible influence. The rating in the product review refers to a
categorical evaluation of the related product from the product review
author [28]. In conventional websites, the value of the rating is ranging
from 1 to 5. Most of the prior scholars found that the rating in the
product review has a significant impact on the product review
helpfulness evaluation [74]. In this regard, we include this control
variable in our model to attenuate the confounding issue. The word
count in the product review author’s response and word count in the
consumers’ comments are included as control variables in our model.
They will help us control the additional information delivered in the
communication between the product review author and other
consumers, thus ensuring that the main effect of product review
length is not contaminated by the exogenous factors [60]. The
descriptive data of these variables are provided in Table 9.
4.2.3. Hypothesis testing
The hypothesis testing is conducted by applying the Tobit regression
to our dataset. The product review helpfulness voting has two salient
features: First, the source of helpfulness voting is bounded with two
extreme options (Yes or No). Second, the existing helpfulness voting is
censored [2]. That means the website does not force every consumer
who viewed the review to vote for its helpfulness. In this regard, there is
a possible selection bias in the sample set. Considering these two fea-
tures in mind, we followed the suggestion from prior literature and used
Tobit regression in this study [75].
The first step is to build a regression model that consists of depen-
dent variables, independent variables, and control variables. The model
should represent the potential relationship developed in the hy-
potheses. In this regard, new variables will be created for presenting
these proposed relationships. H1c posits that the product review length
will have an inverted U-shape relationship with the product review
helpfulness. Thus, we provide both a linear term (Review length) and a
quadratic term (Review length2) in the testing model. If the linear term
is positive and the quadratic is negative at the same time, then it in-
dicates the existence of an inverted U-shape relationship. H2c posits
that the product review author’s response will moderate the relation-
ship between product review length and product review helpfulness. In
this regard, we include interaction terms in the testing model (e.g.,
Review author’s response × Review length). The control variables, such
as product type, have been added to the model. Thus, the full testing

12
M. Li and P. Huang Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359

model of this study is: Table 11

The statistics of model with the subset in which product review author did not
Helpfulness = 1 review _length + 2 review _length2 provide response.
+ 3 rating + 4 author s _response + 5 author s _response × review _length Variable Coefficient t-value Sig.
+ 6 author s _response × review _length2 + 7 author s _response × rating
review_length 0.0001306 7.45 0.000
+ 8 accredit review_length2 −1.05e-08 −4.89 0.000
+ rating 0.057 8.53 0.000
9 verified _purchase+ 10 totalvote
accredit 0.022 0.95 0.345
+ 11 product _type + 12 author s _response _wordcount verified_purchase −0.00405 −0.18 0.854
+ 13 other _ wordcount + totalvote 0.000148 2.83 0.005
product_type 0.140 6.70 0.000
where author’s_response_wordcount −0.000246 −0.40 0.687
other_wordcount −2.73e-06 −0.90 0.369
Helpfulness means the product review helpfulness (constant) 0.270 9.37 0.000
review_length means the length of product review
review_length2 means the quadratic term of the product review McFadden’s R2 = 0.164 and LR = 234.40 (p = 0.000, df 9, 1177).
length
rating means the rating in a product review In the subset where the product review author did not provide any
author’s_response means the boolean value if the product review response, we find a significant indicator of the inverted U-shape re-
author provided a response lationship between product review length and product review help-
author’s_response × review_length means the interaction term of the fulness. Specifically, the linear term of product review length is sig-
product review author’s response and the length of product review nificantly positive (t = 7.45 and p < 0.01) and the quadratic term of
author’s_response × review_length2 means the interaction term of the the product review length is significantly negative (t= −4.89 and
product review author’s response and the quadratic term of length of p < 0.01). In this regard, H1c is supported. Table 11 shows the statistic
product review results of the analysis.
author’s_response × rating means the interaction term of the product In the subset where the product review author provided a response,
review author’s response and the rating in a product review the analysis results show that the relationship between product review
accredit means the boolean value if the product review author has an length and product review helpfulness has been transformed from an
accreditation badge inverted U-shape to a monotonous positive relationship. Specifically,
verified_purchase means boolean value if the product review is based the linear term of product review length has a significant impact on
on a real purchase product review helpfulness (t = 3.13 and p < 0.01). However, the
totalvote means the total number of votes on assessing the product quadratic term of product review length does not have a significant
review helpfulness impact on product review helpfulness (t= −1.79, p > 0.05). In this
product_type means whether the type of the related product is search regard, we can claim support of the H2c from the data analysis result
product or experience product (see Table 12).
author’s_response_wordcount means word count value of the product
review author’s response 4.2.4. Robustness test
other_wordcount means word count value of the consumers’ com- The robustness test is performed to validate the inverted U-shape
ments to the related product review relationship and the moderating effect that has been supported by the
The next step of hypothesis testing is the examination of the re- data analysis. The reason for conducting robustness test originates from
gression result. Table 10 shows the analysis results. the debates of the legitimacy of the method used for testing the inverted
From Table 10, we can observe that the interaction terms of au- U-shape relationship by adding a non-linear term (usually quadratic) in
thor’s_response × review_length and author’s_response × re- a regression model. If the quadratic term is significant and the esti-
view_length2 are significant (p < 0.001). It indicates that the product mated extremum point is within the data range, then researchers
review author’s response has a significant moderating effect on the usually conclude that there is a U (or invert U) shaped relationship.
impact of product review length on product review helpfulness. Thus, However, Lind and Mehlum argued that the criteria are too weak [76].
we split the dataset into two subsets in accordance with the availability There is a high possibility that the true relationship is convex but
of product review author’s response and apply the Tobit regression to monotonous [7]. As a result, the significant quadratic term may not
each of the subsets. always lead to the conclusion of the existence of a (inverted) U-shaped
relationship.
Table 10
To test the robustness of our data analysis result, we performed a
The statistics of the full model.
Variable Coefficient t-value Sig. Table 12
The statistics of model with the subset in which product review author provided
review_length 0.0001333 7.52 0.000
response.
review_length2 −1.08e-08 −4.92 0.000
rating 0.058 8.51 0.000 Variable Coefficient t-value Sig.
author’s_response 0.070 2.07 0.038
author’s_response × review_length −0.0000969 −4.62 0.000 review_length 0.0000368 3.13 0.002
author’s_response × review_length2 9.03e-09 3.77 0.000 review_length2 −1.77e-09 −1.79 0.073
author’s_response × rating 0.025 2.56 0.010 rating 0.082 11.44 0.000
accredit 0.034 2.03 0.043 accredit 0.044 1.79 0.074
verified_purchase 0.013 0.85 0.395 verified_purchase 0.033 1.41 0.158
totalvote 0.00006331 2.24 0.025 totalvote 0.0000304 0.89 0.373
product_type 0.109 7.04 0.000 product_type 0.073 3.19 0.001
author’s_response_wordcount −1.02e-06 −0.21 0.832 author’s_response_wordcount −2.15e-06 −0.42 0.674
other_wordcount 1.19e-07 0.06 0.954 other_wordcount 1.96e-06 0.70 0.481
(constant) 0.265 10.32 0.000 (constant) 0.335 9.90 0.000

McFadden’s R2 = 0.159 and LR = 466.94 (p = 0.000, df 13, 2285). McFadden’s R2 = 0.122 and LR = 176.76 (p = 0.000, df 9, 1108).

13
M. Li and P. Huang
rigorous test of the inverted U-shaped relationship between product
review length and product review helpfulness as well as the moderating
effect of the provision of product review author’s response. This test
was developed by Lind and Mehlum in their seminal paper on ex-
amining the U-shaped relationship in economic research papers [76].
The robustness test results indicate that there is a significant inverted U-
shaped relationship between product review length and product review
helpfulness under the without product review author’s response con-
dition (t = 4.32 and p < 0.0001). Moreover, with the provision of
product review author’s response, the inverted U-shaped relationship
becomes insignificant (t = 1.55 and p > 0.05). Consequently, the
outcomes of the robustness test strengthen the validity of the hy-
potheses testing results.
5. General discussion
This paper is the first to adopt the human’s affective-cognitive
model of decision-making to investigate the impact of product review
length on product review helpfulness as well as the moderating effect of
the provision of product review author’s response. By conducting a
controlled laboratory experiment and an analytical study on the real
product review data, we present the theoretically rigorous and em-
pirically appropriate evidence to support the claim of an inverted U-
shaped relationship between product review length and product review
helpfulness. Importantly, this paper develops a pertinent theoretical
explanation of the inverted U-shape relationship with the consideration
of consumers’ affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing. In this
regard, we are able to address the first two research questions of this
paper. Specifically, based on our findings, when the product review
length is short, the low level of product review helpfulness is mainly
determined with the poor performance of consumers’ cognition-or-
iented processing of the product review. When the product review
length is excessively long, however, the low level of product review
helpfulness is largely determined with the low status of consumers’
affect-oriented processing outcomes. This finding is novel and has not
been researched in the extant literature.
We further demonstrated that the inverted U-shaped relationship
between product review length and product review helpfulness can be
moderated with the provision of product review author’s response to
the consumers’ comments in the review commenting IT artifact. By
considering the theoretical explanation of problem-centered coping and
emotional-centered coping, we found that the provision of product re-
view author’s response to the consumers’ comments would provide
adaptive moderating effect with the consideration of the deficiencies in
consumers’ affect-oriented processing/cognition-oriented processing
under different product review length contexts. In the short product
review condition, our findings demonstrate that the product review
author’s response compensates the poor performance of consumers’
cognition-oriented processing of the product review. In the excessively
long product review condition, however, the product review author’s
response mainly compensates the negative affect generated during the
processing of excessive information in a product review. It subsequently
attenuates the negative impact on the product review helpfulness. Thus,
we successfully address the third research question. This finding is
unique. It corroborates our theoretical reasoning on dual processing
(affective-cognitive) of the product review length and its impact on
product review helpfulness. More importantly, this finding presents the
dynamics of the moderating effect across different status of a con-
tinuum. In this regard, it provides meaningful implications to future
studies about how to excavate the full potential of the moderating ef-
fect.
5.1. Theoretical implications
This paper intends to provide three key theoretical contributions to
the existing knowledge on the product review helpfulness. First, this
14
Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
paper digs deeper to understand the underlying mechanism of how
consumers leverage both the affect-oriented and cognition-oriented
processing to evaluate the impact of product review length on product
review helpfulness. We found that consumers would use both the affect-
oriented and cognition-oriented processing to assess the product review
helpfulness. In addition, the utilization of these two types of processing
is subject to the availability of consumers’ information processing re-
source, which is significantly influenced by the primitive information of
the external stimuli such as the product review length. Our paper en-
hances the inclusiveness of theoretical perspective that builds the
linkage between the information being processed and the consumers’
internal processing comprehensively. In this regard, our paper com-
plements the extant literature that holds the unitarian view of con-
sumers’ internal processing for assessing the impact of product review
length on product review helpfulness [2]. Although, the theoretical
foundation of the extant studies provides a good basis for understanding
consumers’ behavior in interpreting the product review content in
general. However, it cannot offer pertinent explanations to the condi-
tions that consumers’ affect-oriented and cognition-oriented processing
takes place when evaluating the product review helpfulness [6], which
is more relevant to the conventional individual decision-making process
from the perspective of decision science and psychology disciplines that
found the affect is also a critical factor for influencing decision outcome
[16]. For example, Lerner and Keltner argued that a human’s affect
(emotion) carries information that will be used as an input for decision-
making [77]. It indicates that the consideration of the influence of af-
fect should be assimilated into the theoretical understanding of deci-
sion-making behavior. In this regard, our paper sheds light on a novel
theoretical framework for understanding consumers’ evaluation of
product review helpfulness from both the affect-oriented and cognition-
oriented processing perspectives.
Second, this study demonstrates the moderating effect of product
review author’s response in the review commenting function on the
relationship between product review length and product review help-
fulness. In this regard, we provide a salient theoretical explanation on
how the add-on IT artifact shifts consumers’ evaluation performance for
assessing the product review helpfulness. Most of the prior literature
focused on the influence of some product review features. Their argu-
ments are mainly characterized within the boundary of endogenous
features of a product review, such as product review length [39],
content readability [37], and content valence [25]. However, with the
development of business logic of providing product review in the online
shopping website, there are many websites that provide interactive add-
on functionalities in the product review system, such as the review
commenting function. In this regard, it is imperative to investigate the
effect of the add-on IT artifact on the consumers’ evaluation of product
review helpfulness. Our study contributes to the existing knowledge by
investigating the salient moderating effect of product review author’s
response. The research findings shed light on a more comprehensive
examination of the related factors that influence the product review
helpfulness in the online environment.
Third, this paper provides a salient contribution on consolidating
the mixed research findings of the impact of product review length on
product review helpfulness in most of the prior studies. As discussed,
prior studies yielded inconsistent findings on the impact of product
review length on product review helpfulness [7,8]. In our study, the
theoretical explanation of the moderating effect corroborates with the
underpinning of the main effect of product review length on product
review helpfulness. As a result, our paper provides a possible ex-
planation for the mixed findings in prior studies. We argue that most of
the mixed findings were due to the neglect of the influence of the
communicative interaction between the product review author and
other consumers. In this regard, this paper complements prior studies
by addressing the dichotomized findings of the impact of product re-
view length on product review helpfulness.
M. Li and P. Huang
5.2. Practical implications
Besides the theoretical contributions, this study could help practi-
tioners identify the appropriate methods for delivering product review
information to consumers with the aim of enhancing consumers’ eva-
luation of product review helpfulness. First, we demonstrated an in-
verted U-shaped relationship between the length of product review and
product review helpfulness. It indicates that both insufficient and ex-
cessive information in product review has detrimental impacts on
consumers’ evaluation of product review helpfulness. For the practical
implementation of this finding, an adaptive content length indicator
could be designed and implemented in the product review system.
When composing a product review, the adaptive content length in-
dicator would provide instant feedback to review authors with sug-
gestions of either increasing the product review content or reducing the
information provided in the product review. Consequently, the product
review could receive a good evaluation of its helpfulness from other
consumers, compared with a short product review or extremely long
product review.
Second, the finding of the moderating role of product review au-
thor’s response in the review commenting function could provide an
actionable suggestion to the practitioners for the low-cost and easy-to-
deploy maintenance method of product review helpfulness, particularly
for the short- and excessively long product review. To address the
concern of information overload of the excessively long product review,
prior studies often suggested that practitioners use text mining tech-
nique or structured composition technique to highlight the key opinions
in a product review [78]. These techniques are very useful for enhan-
cing the product review helpfulness. However, practitioners often face
significant challenges when adopting these techniques on websites. For
example, practitioners need to develop (or purchase) the text mining
packages and the related hardware to process the large volume of
product reviews generated every minute. Or they need to recruit ad-
ditional employees to monitor the quality of product review. Compared
with these techniques, our suggestion to practitioners does not require a
significant amount of investment to the existing product review system.
The only thing they need to do is to encourage the product review
authors to respond to the consumers’ comments in time. This method
can be easily deployed by adding a notification message in the product
review composing interface window or using the existing email system
to send the courtesy email for notifying product review authors about
the benefits of responding to the consumers’ comments.
5.3. Limitation and future research
Despite the contributions to researchers and practitioners, this study
suffers limitations that serve as a suggestion for future research. First,
we did not obtain the objective measures of consumers’ affect and their
available cognitive information processing resource when reading the
product review. Objective data of consumers’ affect and the available
cognitive information processing resource can be measured by the
neurophysiological method (e.g., EEG and fMRI) [79]. However, ap-
plying the techniques would bring significant challenges to violating
the legitimacy and relevancy of the research method. Most of the
widely adopted neurophysiological methods are obtrusive [80]. In this
regard, participants may not behave like a normal online shopping with
the devices on (or around) their head. Nevertheless, we do acknowledge
the lack of examining the objective data of consumers’ affect and cog-
nitive information processing resource is a limitation of this study.
Future scholars could use the unobtrusive method to collect data.
15
Information & Management 57 (2020) 103359
Second, we did not examine the impact of the presentation format of
product reviews in this paper, such as video-based and photo-based
reviews. Prior scholars found that different presentation formats of
product review content could result in varying impacts on evaluation
toward a product review [81]. It is reasonable to infer that the product
review presentation format has an impact on consumers’ affect and
cognitive processing style [82]. In this study, we controlled the pre-
sentation format of a product review in both Studies 1 and 2. Future
studies could extend the investigation scope by adopting another type
of product review presentation format, such as video-based or photo-
based product reviews, with the established voting outcomes of the
product review helpfulness and the commenting records from con-
sumers. It will be very promising, if such a kind of study can be built
upon the current paper. The potential outcomes will be fruitful for
contributing our knowledge base of product review and consumers’
evaluation of product review helpfulness in the e-commerce environ-
ment.
Third, we did not have a similar number of female participants and
male participants in Study 1. Even though the gender ratio has no
significant difference across the treatment groups in the experiment, the
male-skewed sample set may restrict the generalizability of the research
findings to the female cohorts. In future studies, we will endeavor to
have balanced female and male participants in the experiment.
Fourth, we did not examine other important product review’s dis-
positions, such as review quality, and their impact on the consumers’
evaluation of product review helpfulness. In this paper, we dig deeper
to understand the underlying mechanism of how consumers process
product review length to assess the product review helpfulness. Thus,
the investigation of other product reviews’ disposition is out of the
scope of this paper. Nevertheless, we do acknowledge it as a limitation
of this paper and we will plan to investigate it in future research.
6. Conclusion
Electronic commerce has grown and continues to grow ex-
ponentially. Following the progression of global economic integration,
electronic commerce has become a new economic growth point for
many countries. Hence, it is essential to gain a better understanding of
how online product reviews are best utilized during the decision-
making process. The helpfulness of product review, as one of the most
important indicators of online commercial website’s business perfor-
mance, reflects the extent to which consumers perceive the review in
facilitating judgment or purchase decisions. A helpful product review
significantly influences consumer purchase decisions. The present study
is a modest step toward developing a theoretically sound interpretation
for product review helpfulness. The implications will be beneficial to
both scholars and practitioners.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Mengxiang Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original
draft, Writing - review & editing. Pu Huang: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgments
This paper is partially supported by the General Research Fund from
Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region, China (12500118). It is also supported by the Faculty Research
Grant from the Hong Kong Baptist University (FRG2/17-18/077).
M. Li and P. Huang
Appendix A. Items for measuring the subjective constructs in Study 1
Construct Items
Affect-oriented pro- Because of the length of product review, evaluating the product
cessing (Negati- review helpfulness made me feel bad.
ve) Because of the length of product review, I had unpleasant feelings
about evaluating the product review helpfulness.
Affect-oriented pro- Because of the length of product review, evaluating the product
cessing (Positi- review helpfulness made me feel good.
ve) Because of the length of product review, I had pleasant feelings
about evaluating the product review helpfulness.
Cognition-oriented The product review helped me familiarize myself with the product.
processing The product review helped me evaluate the product.
The product review helped me understand the performance of the
product.
Cognitive proces- When evaluating the helpfulness of product review, it took me a lot
sing load of processing efforts to digest the content.
When evaluating the helpfulness of product review, I needed a lot of
thinking.
When evaluating the helpfulness of product review, I spent a lot of
cognitive effort to process the information.
Generally speaking, digesting the product review was cognitively
demanding for evaluating its helpfulness.
When evaluating the helpfulness of product review, I incurred a
significant cognitive load.
Prior product kno- I am familiar with this product.
wledge If my friends asked me about this product, I could give them advice
for the purchase decision.
If I had to purchase this product today, I would need to gather only
little additional information to make a wise decision.
I feel confident about my ability to tell the details about this
product.
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217–234. and the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems.

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