The impacts of geographic and social influences on review helpfulness perceptions: A social contagion perspective

Abstract

Identifying and presenting helpful reviews to customers can significantly affect their purchase decisions. Although review helpfulness has been extensively explored in tourism research, extant studies have not sufficiently emphasized the unique characteristics of tourism products and investigated review helpfulness perceptions from both geographic and social influence perspectives. In this study, drawing on social contagion theory, we developed a theoretical framework to examine the impact of social contagion, specifically geographic and social proximities, on perceived review helpfulness. Our empirical analyses of Yelp restaurant reviews indicated that geographic and social influences have varying impacts on review helpfulness perceptions. Additionally, social contagions significantly moderated the impacts of various review- and reviewer-related factors, and product characteristics further moderated the contagion effect on perceived review helpfulness. This study provides valuable theoretical and methodological contributions to research on review helpfulness, especially in tourism contexts, and lays out the practical implications for various stakeholders.