题 目：Should You be Fired Up If You Want to be Helpful? Curvilinear Effects of Emotional Arousal in Online Word-of-Mouth
主讲人：Han Zhang（Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology）
时 间：2013年6月14日（周五）下午2:30
地 点：主楼216
内容摘要：
    This paper examines the impact of emotional arousal on the perceived helpfulness of text reviews. Building on dimensional theories of emotion, we propose a curvilinear relationship by which the arousal conveyed in a text review will be associated by readers with higher perceived helpfulness when arousal levels are low, but the marginal benefit of additional arousal diminishes as arousal increases. We suggest that perceptions of reviewer effort and rationality underlie this curvilinear effect. To test these hypotheses, three studies were conducted. In Study 1, we collected review data from Apple’s App Store, coded those reviews for arousal using text analysis tools, and examined the curvilinear relationship between arousal and review helpfulness. In Study 2, we utilized a restaurant context and solicited realistic reviews adapted to diverse arousal versions by participants in a pretest. Then we experimentally manipulated arousal and valence of reviews in the main study and measured the process variables of perceived effort and rationality. In Study 3, we manipulated emotional arousal in a more constrained manner and explored whether the impact of arousal depends on product type. All studies provided support for a non-linear effect of emotional arousal regardless of valence and product type. We found that arousal positively influences review helpfulness when arousal levels are low, and this influence is mediated by perceived effort. As arousal increases beyond certain threshold, however, the effect of arousal ceases to exist. This paper reveals the necessity of considering emotional arousal when evaluating review helpfulness, and the results carry important practical implications.
主讲人简介：
    张晗博士2000年获得美国德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校管理信息系统博士，是佐治亚理工大学12BET的Helen and John Taylor Rhett, Jr. 副教授（拥有终身教职），并担任该院信息技术管理的领域主任（Area Coordinator），他也是著名的德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校电子商务研究中心的客座研究员。他的研究主要集中在网络信任和信誉、网上支付和电子市场的演化等方面。他的学术论文曾发表在MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems等学术期刊。他现在是 Decision Support Systems, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (ECRA), Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Database Management的编委会成员。