EXPRESS: Picture This: How Review Valence Shapes the Quality and Helpfulness of User-Generated Photos

User-generated photos play an increasingly important role in online reviews, yet little is known about the process by which they are initially created. This paper develops a theory of image creation arguing that reviewers invest more creative effort in photographing products/services they feel positively (vs. negatively) about. This greater effort results in higher-quality photos that observers find to be more helpful, both because they are easier to visually process and because they engender greater trust in the reviewer. Results across six studies—including controlled experiments and an observational laboratory study (N = 4,218) as well as field analyses of Amazon and Yelp reviews (N = 669,937)—lend support to these predictions. By identifying valence as a driver of creative effort in user-generated photography, the findings advance knowledge on how visual content is produced in online marketplaces and how such content is evaluated by consumers.