Estimating reviewer credibility using review contents and review histories

Abstract

In recent years, user-supplied reviews have increased to become widely prevalent on many websites. Some reviewers (users who comment on items) provide valuable information. Others provide information many people already know. Our goal is to identify credible reviewers who provide valuable information. Twomethods can be used to measure reviewer credibility: assessing reviewers based on the content of reviews that they have written in the past and assessing reviewers based on their review histories. By comparing these methods, we aim at obtaining knowledge to determine which method is most useful for identifying credible reviewers. Additionally, many features have been proposed for assessing reviews or reviewers in the previous methods, but they have not been compared. We compare these attributes and clarify what kinds of attribute are useful for identifying credible reviewers. Copyright © 2012 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.