Emotion as signal of product quality: Its effect on purchase decision based on online customer reviews

摘要

Purpose Information asymmetry is an inevitable issue in e-commerce and largely hampers the development of online shopping. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to investigate the emotional content of online customer reviews, which are considered an efficient way to reduce information asymmetry, as a potential signal of product quality. The moderating effects of perceived empathy and cognitive effort are also explored on the basis of signaling theory.