Helpfulness of Online User Reviews: More is Less

Online review has been found to be import to online businesses. The sheer number of online reviews hinders websites users’ ability to draw useful information from previous users. Thus, a helpfulness mechanism which facilitates users to locate the most helpful reviews adds value to websites. This paper explores the helpfulness of online review from a cognitive science perspective. Drawing upon cognitive load theory and source credibility heuristics cues, the paper develops a framework to understand the cognitive process of review readers to evaluate the helpfulness of a review. The study testes the proposed model using 2,371 actually reviews from a popular website. The results support the theoretical model. The distinct finding that is different from previous studies is an inverse “U-shaped” effect of word counts on review helpfulness. In addition, the study found an inverse “U-shaped” effect of readability on review helpfulness.