Drawing on Construal Level Theory, we propose that consumer search stage (i.e., screening or selecting), not psychological distance, interacts with review features to influence review helpfulness. Through an online experiment, we test the interaction effects between textual concreteness, review valence and consumer search on review helpfulness at close and far temporal distances. Our findings support a congruency effect between consumer search stage and textual concreteness, showing that positive, abstract reviews are more helpful in the screening stage, while negative, concrete reviews are more helpful in the selection stage. Conversely, temporal distance had a negligible effect. Our results suggest that consumer search stages may confound previous findings on psychological distance and review helpfulness and have practical implications regarding review relevance for consumers.

中文翻译：

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解释水平理论和在线评论：搜索阶段视角


借鉴解释层面理论，我们提出消费者搜索阶段（即筛选或选择），而不是心理距离，与评论特征相互作用以影响评论的有用性。通过在线实验，我们测试了文本具体性、评论效价和消费者搜索之间的交互作用对近距离和远距离的评论有用性的影响。我们的研究结果支持消费者搜索阶段和文本具体性之间的一致性效应，表明正面、抽象的评论在筛选阶段更有帮助，而负面、具体的评论在选择阶段更有帮助。相反，时间距离的影响可以忽略不计。我们的结果表明，消费者搜索阶段可能会混淆之前关于心理距离和评论有用性的发现，并在评论与消费者的相关性方面具有实际意义。