Unraveling the interplay of review depth, review breadth, and review language style on review usefulness and review adoption

Abstract

To examine whether long reviews are uniformly more useful to readers, this study utilizes the experimental design approach to investigate the interplay of review depth, review breadth, and review language style on readers’ perceived usefulness and adoption intention of online hotel reviews. Drawing on the results from two experiments, review depth is proven to exert a positive impact on readers’ review usefulness and adoption intention. The moderating role of review breadth is verified, and the positive effect of review depth on review usefulness is attenuated (accentuated) when review breadth is high (low). The moderating role of review language style is also confirmed, and the result shows longer reviews written in literal language are considered more useful to readers than those written in figurative language. Being one of the first studies examining the interplay of review content and review style on review usefulness, this study provides important theoretical and practical contributions.