Negativity bias effect in helpfulness perception of word-of-mouths: The influence of concreteness and emotion

Abstract

Word-of-mouth (WOM) is a powerful information resource for consumers to judge a product or service. WOM has persuasive power when audiences regard it as helpful. There is a psychological phenomenon, called the negativity bias, in which negative WOMs are usually regarded as more helpful than positive ones. However, not all previous studies supported the existence of negativity bias. This paper examines the negativity bias effect of WOM and explores the moderating effect of length and emotional content on the helpfulness perception of WOM. This study adopted experimental designs of 2 (positive/ negative WOMs) X 2 (long/short WOMs) X 2 (WOMs with strong emotion/ weak emotion) of 139 subjects. The empirical survey results reveal that length and emotional content of WOMs are influential factors for helpfulness perception of WOMs. Moreover, both length content and emotional content of WOMs also moderate the negativity bias effect of helpfulness perception. The negativity bias effect appears when WOMs are concrete and emotional.