Detecting fake hospitality reviews through the interplay of emotional cues, cognitive cues and review valence

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the dynamics of emotional cues and cognitive cues in review fakeness. Additionally, the boundary condition (i.e. review valence) for the dynamics between emotional cues and cognitive cues is investigated.Design/methodology/approachThis research conducted two studies, which analyzed restaurant and hotel reviews collected from Yelp.com. The authors adopted linguistic inquiry and word count 2015 to code review contents and tested the hypotheses using logistic regression.FindingsFake reviews contain more emotional cues compared with authentic reviews. Moreover, the dynamics of emotional cues and cognitive cues are salient among negative reviews.Practical implicationsThis research provides implications to identify fake online reviews based on linguistic cues.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the literature by revealing the competition of mental resources between emotional and cognitive systems when deception is for harming others. Grounded in interpersonal deception theory, this paper investigates the interactive effect and complements the literature, which mainly used emotional cues and cognitive cues individually to detect fake reviews.