Research On The Effect Of Psychological Distance On Online Hotel Reviews And Management Responses

Consumers are gradually accustomed to relying on online reviews to make purchase decisions,and sharing their comments about product or service after consumption.The development of online platforms is also based on consumers’ online reviews.Although studies have investigated consumers’ review behavior on online platforms from diverse perspectives,there are still lots of uncovered research questions.For one thing,due to online reviews’ attributes of public goods,how to motivate consumers to actively share high-quality reviews has attracted the attention of firms and scholars.For another thing,the increase in review volume brings challenges for consumers’ information search,and the cost of judging the helpfulness of reviews.At the same time,firms increasingly realize the importance of management responses to facilitate service recovery for existing reviewers and to attract potential consumers.However,it is unclear about the potential preference and bias of management responses in practice.Although online reviews seem to close the physical distance of information communication between consumers and firms,it is difficult for consumers to establish a close psychological connection with product or peer consumers through content shared online.In the process of actual consumption experiences and review generation,the psychological distance between consumers and firms also exists.Previous research has gradually paid attention to the effects of spatial,temporal and cultural dimension of psychological distance on consumers’ intentions,purchase decisions,and consumption satisfaction ratings.However,less of them has focused on the effect of psychological distance on consumers’ online review generation and consumption process,and firms’ management responses.To fill the above research gaps,this study systematically summarizes and integrates the relevant literature and theories on psychological distance,online review and management response.On the basis,this study takes online hotel data from TripAdvisor,one of the world’s representative online travel platforms,as the research object,and empirically analyzes the influence of different dimensions of psychological distances on consumers’ online reviews and firms’ management responses with econometric models.The specific research content is as follows:(1)This study investigates the effect of psychological distance on online review generation.Psychological distance is crucial for understanding consumers’ decisions and behavior.However,research has not addressed how the spatial distance between consumers and hotels influences online review generation.By constructing diverse econometric models,this study illustrates a positive relationship between spatial distance and consumers’ review effort,while the marginal effect of spatial distance on review effort declines.Moreover,temporal distance and cultural distance negatively affect review effort and mitigate the effect of spatial distance.This research provides practical suggestions for online incentive system design and consumer relationship management to hotels and travel platforms.(2)This study examines the effect of psychological distance on online review consumption.Based on psychological distance and construal level theory,this study demonstrates the direct and indirect effects of spatial distance between reviewers and hotels on review helpfulness.Empirical results show that spatial distance positively affects review helpfulness through review concreteness and emotional tendency in textual content as two mediators.Moreover,we also find that the effects of review concreteness and emotional tendency are differently moderated by review valence,and review valence also moderates the abovementioned mediation effects.This research innovatively explores the review textual characteristics,identifies their key roles in the relationship between spatial distance and review helpfulness,and deeply analyzes their effects under different levels of review valence.The findings provide guidance for online platforms to promote high-quality reviews.(3)This study explores the effect of psychological distance on management response generation.The research reveals the phenomena of response biases and its potential antecedent,which refines the management response behaviors by uncovering the factors weakening the biases.By building different empirical models,the results indicate that firms’ management response biases exit in whether to respond,response speed,and response effort,which are inclined to consumer reviews with low-level spatial distance and temporal distance.With the improvement of firms’ management response experience and comprehensive service quality,the effects of spatial distance and temporal distance on response biases are alleviated.Based on the empirical results,the research provides practical implications for reinforcing the fairness and strategy of management response.To sum up,this research innovatively fills the research gaps in consumers’ online review generation and consumption,and firms’ management responses from a perspective of psychological distance.It presents practical directions for providing consumers higher-quality review content and better response service,and for the improvement and development of online travel platforms and firms.