Understanding online review helpfulness: a pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model perspective
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) emotion model, the emotional states of consumers embedded in online reviews can be described through three dimensions, that is, pleasure, arousal and dominance, rather than only the one-dimensional positive and negative polarity, as in previous studies. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effect of online review emotion on perceived review helpfulness based on these three basic emotional dimensions.
Design/methodology/approach
A lexicon-based method is developed to analyze PAD emotions of online reviews from JD.com. The zero-inflated negative binomial regression is utilized to empirically validate the study hypothesis. The authors examine the influence of pleasure, arousal, dominance, emotion diversity and emotion deviation on review helpfulness, as well as the moderating effect of product type on the relationship between all independent variables and online review helpfulness.
Findings
The study results show that the pleasure emotion impairs the helpfulness of online reviews, while the arousal and dominance emotions have a positive impact. Moreover, the authors find that compared with search products, the effects of pleasure, arousal and dominance on perceived helpfulness are strengthened for experience products. However, the emotional diversity and emotional deviation have opposite effects on the helpfulness of search products and experience products. Additionally, the results show that dominance emotion plays a more important role in the interaction effect.
Originality/value
The empirical findings confirm the applicability of PAD in the online review context and extend the existing knowledge of the influence of review emotion on helpfulness. A feasible scheme for extracting PAD variables from Chinese text is developed. The study findings also have significant implications for reviewers, merchants and platform managers of e-commerce websites.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Zhong Yao, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, No. 72371007) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (Pengfei Tang, School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, No. 72201020).
Citation
Xu, W., Yao, Z., He, D. and Cao, L. (2023), "Understanding online review helpfulness: a pleasure-arousal-dominance (PAD) model perspective", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-04-2023-0121
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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