Evaluating Effects of Information Incongruence and Gender on Online Review Helpfulness.

Empirical research has shown mixed results regarding the effect of online review attributes (e.g., tone, valence, congruence) on consumer perceptions of reviews. Drawing on selectivity theory and cognitive dissonance theory, we dive deeper into decision making to understand how different people perceive helpfulness. The study explores the interplay between review attributes and gender on perceptions of review helpfulness. We conducted a between-subject, controlled laboratory experiment to test our model. We propose that review information congruence plays an important role in evaluating online review helpfulness. We also expect that women consider negative informative and positive persuasive online reviews more helpful whereas men consider positive informative and negative persuasive online reviews more helpful. The study brings important extensions to existing research on relationships between online review helpfulness and online review attributes.