Review helpfulness as a function of discrete negative emotions and image colorfulness

Abstract

Given that helpful reviews are valuable to both customers and e-commerce platforms, a better understanding of the antecedents for review helpfulness offers clear benefits to review writers and online vendors. This paper proposes two research questions: How will negative discrete emotions expressed through review text (i.e., fear, anger, sadness, and disgust) influence review helpfulness? And how will review textual emotions and image colorfulness of review interactively influence review helpfulness? Using online review of computer related products sold via Amazon in the past five years, we found that anger increase online review helpfulness, while sadness and disgust decrease the helpfulness. We also found the moderating effects of review image colorfulness on the relationship between discrete emotions and online review helpfulness. Our research advances the existing online review literature by proposing the importance of discrete emotions and its interactive effect with review image colorfulness in review helpfulness.