Space Norms for Constructing Quality Reviews on Online Consumer Review Sites

Abstract

As consumer-generated online reviews are recognized as an essential component of many e-commerce websites, practitioners and digital platforms strive to elicit high-quality reviews. Yet research so far mainly focuses on what drives consumers to submit reviews, whereas little has been done to help understand why review writers construct high-quality reviews versus post poor review content. This paper demonstrates that the behavior of writing quality reviews is largely directed by space norms, a distinct instantiation of social norms inferred from locally observing how others write reviews in the digital space (i.e., the review site). The perception of the space norm begets a sense that one should write reviews in accordance with the norm and induces the corresponding behavior on the given site. Our work lends insights to practitioners and digital platforms: managers looking to elicit quality reviewing behavior should devise the local website environment to foster the space norms for the desired behavior. We offer several cost-effective methods to foster space norms, including a machine learning approach.