European Journal of Information Systems

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Negativity bias in the diagnosticity of online

review content: the effects of consumers’ prior
experience and need for cognition

Hamed Qahri-Saremi & Ali Reza Montazemi

To cite this article: Hamed Qahri-Saremi & Ali Reza Montazemi (2023) Negativity bias
in the diagnosticity of online review content: the effects of consumers’ prior experience
and need for cognition, European Journal of Information Systems, 32:4, 717-734, DOI:
10.1080/0960085X.2022.2041372

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2022.2041372

Published online: 10 Mar 2022.

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
2023, VOL. 32, NO. 4, 717–734
https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2022.2041372

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Negativity bias in the diagnosticity of online review content: the effects of

consumers’ prior experience and need for cognition
a b
Hamed Qahri-Saremi and Ali Reza Montazemi
a
College of Business, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; bDeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Ontario,
Hamilton, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The importance of online review valence is a subject of debate among scholars. Prior studies Received 12 January 2021
mostly assumed valence as a “peripheral” cue derived from online review surface features (e.g., Accepted 3 February 2022
star ratings). This assumption has important implications as it restricts the negativity bias KEYWORDS
effects to a certain group of consumers who lack pertinent prior experience with the pro­ Negativity bias; online
duct/service domain and the motivation to assess the product/service. Focusing on online reviews; need for cognition;
service context and drawing on an adaptational view to negative information, we investigate prior experience; elaboration
the negativity bias in the effects of the valence of the “content” of online reviews on con­ likelihood model; online
sumers’ attitudes and show that it can be attributed to the higher perceived diagnosticity of service
negative reviews. This is determined by consumers’ in-depth elaborations of reviews’ contents,
which are contingent on their prior experience with the domain of online service and need for
cognition. Our findings provide a new perspective to negativity bias by showing that more
experienced and thoughtful consumers are also influenced by negativity bias when the
content of online reviews is considered. This is a novel account of negativity bias in the effects
of online reviews that underscores the importance of response strategies for reducing their
adverse effects.

1. Introduction (Chen & Lurie, 2013). Indeed, if not addressed effec­

While seeking other consumers’ personal experi­
ences with products/services for purchase decisions,
traditionally known as word of mouth (WoM), is
not a new phenomenon, online platforms, such as
Yelp and TripAdvisor, have amplified the popular­
ity and importance of WoM for consumers and
providers to unprecedented levels by creating the
online version of WoM: “online reviews” (also
referred to as “electronic WoM” and “eWoM”).
These platforms have facilitated ubiquitous and
convenient access to a large number of online
reviews about almost any product/service. As
a result, compared to offline WoMs, online reviews
are profoundly more influential on consumers’
decisions. A recent survey found that in 2020,
87% of consumers consulted with online reviews
before choosing a local business, and 79% of con­
sumers trusted online reviews as much as personal
recommendations from their friends and family
(Murphy, 2020).
However, not all online reviews are equal in their
impacts on consumers’ decisions. In this vein, an
ongoing debate among scholars concerns the “nega­
tivity bias” in the effects of online reviews that happens
when negative reviews (NR) have larger and/or more
lasting impacts on consumers’ decisions as compared
to positive reviews (PR) of comparative magnitude
tively, NRs can spark an “online firestorm” which can
spread at an exponential rate reaching thousands or
millions of consumers in a short period of time. An
online firestorm entails a sudden discharge of large
quantities of negative messages and complaints
against a firm on social media platforms (Pfeffer
et al., 2014). Therefore, firms must detect and ade­
quately respond to NRs in online platforms to avoid
potential public debacles, online rating declines, cus­
tomer defections, and profit reductions (Curchod
et al., 2020; Pfeffer et al., 2014). To that end, it is
important for firms to understand how NRs influence
their consumers and when their impacts on consu­
mers are stronger than those of PRs (i.e., “negativity
bias”).
Despite the relative importance of NR, prior
research findings about its asymmetric effects on con­
sumers’ opinions and decisions (i.e., negativity bias)
are mixed (Qahri-Saremi & Montazemi, 2019, 2020).
While some prior works have found support for the
negativity bias in the effects of online reviews (e.g.,
Chen & Lurie, 2013), others have not been able to find
this effect (e.g., Wu, 2013). In most of these studies,
valence (i.e., positivity and negativity) of an online
review has been implicitly or explicitly assumed as
a “peripheral cue” (a heuristic) simply derived from
the surface features of an online review without giving

CONTACT Hamed Qahri-Saremi hamed.qahri-saremi@colostate.edu

© Operational Research Society 2022.
718 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI
much considerations to the contents of the message
(Qahri-Saremi & Montazemi, 2019). Indeed, in these
studies, “star ratings” has been predominantly used as
the basis for determining the positivity and negativity
of online reviews. As an aggregated measure that
serves as a heuristic, “star ratings can reduce cognitive
processing effort” (Nazlan et al., 2018, p. 451); there­
fore, by relying on star ratings, prior studies on online
review valence have predominantly assumed negativ­
ity bias as a peripheral effect. On this basis, a common
explanation in studies that could not detect the nega­
tivity bias effects is that valence of an online review as
a simple peripheral cue loses its significance for
a certain group of consumers who pay more attention
to the “central” cues related to the content of an online
review, such as its quality (Wu, 2013).
Assuming the valence of an online review as
a peripheral cue has important theoretical and practi­
cal implications. As explained by dual-process the­
ories, such as elaboration likelihood model (ELM;
Petty & Wegener, 1998), only a certain group of con­
sumers who lack either pertinent experience with the
product/service domain or the motivation to assess
a product/service (that is they are either novice or
uninvolved) rely on peripheral cues for decision-
making. Thus, based on this assumption, it can essen­
tially be inferred that negativity bias should only
impact the decisions of novice and uninvolved
consumers.
Nevertheless, a separate stream of research, outside
of online review literature, has found that consumers
who are more experienced and involved with
a decision are indeed more affected by negativity bias
in the contents of the messages related to their deci­
sion (e.g., Ahluwalia, 2002; Lane et al., 2021; Rozin &
Royzman, 2001). One major difference in this stream
of research as compared to the (majority of) extant
online review research is their focus on the “content”
of the message, rather than peripheral cues around it
(e.g., star ratings in online review context), for inves­
tigating the negativity bias effects. Not only are their
findings antithetical to the predominant assumption
in online review literature about the peripheral nature
of negativity bias, but also markedly change its impor­
tance for a different and arguably more important
group of consumers, who are experienced in and
involved with a product/service. While negative
valence as a peripheral cue only affecting novice and
uninvolved consumers may not invoke firms to devise
strategies to respond to the NRs about their products/
services, negativity as a central cue impacting the
decisions of experienced and involved consumers is
sufficiently crucial for firms to devise clear response
strategies to contain the adverse consequences of NRs
(Casado-Díaz et al., 2020; Wei et al., 2013; Yu et al.,
2021). The reason is that experienced and involved
consumers are not only more important targets for
firms to increase their sales, but also more influential
on other potential consumers’ decisions to adopt
a firm’s product/service (Boyer & Hult, 2006).
Extant online review literature has paid little atten­
tion to the conditions and pertinent factors that can
influence the negativity bias effects based on the actual
contents of online reviews. In this paper, we address
this important matter by extending the concept of
negativity bias effects beyond simple star ratings and
to the valence of the online review content. By masking
the star rating effects in our study, we assess the
asymmetric effects of NR (versus PR) reflected in the
contents of the online reviews on consumers’ atti­
tudes, in the pre-usage stage of online experience
services, when no firsthand use experience with the
online service is available. To that end, our research
objective is to investigate whether the negativity bias
based on the contents of online reviews is attributed to
the differences in the perceived diagnosticity of NRs for
different consumers. For doing so, we take an “adapta­
tional” view of information as explained in prior IS re-
search (Lee,2010; McKinney Jr. & Yoos II, 2010). We
contend that negativity bias occurs when the negative
information within an online review is a “perceived
‘difference that makes a difference’ (Bateson, 1973) to
a subject” (McKinney Jr. & Yoos II,2010, p. 336).
Perceived diagnosticity of NRs for different consumers
can be a function of their in-depth elaborations of the
online reviews’ contents. On this basis and drawing on
the ELM and extant negativity bias literature, we
hypothesize that the negativity bias in the effects of
online reviews content is a function of consumers’
depth of elaboration of the online review messages,
which is contingent on their prior experience with the
domain of the product/service and their level of need
for cognition. We validate our hypotheses via a ran­
domized controlled experiment. Our findings provide
a novel, counter-intuitive, and complementary
account of the negativity bias in the effects of online
reviews and help to explain some of the inconsistent
findings in the extant literature in this regard.
2. Theory and hypotheses
2.1. Negativity bias
Research in decision-making has shown that people
generally give higher weight to negative information
than positive information of comparative magnitude
and that the former tends to invoke greater informa­
tion processing and lasts longer in the memory (Rozin
& Royzman, 2001). This effect, called negativity bias, is
inherently a comparative notion as it is the function of
the weight and importance of negative information in
the formation of attitudes and judgements relative to
those of positive information (Rozin & Royzman,

2001). Prior studies in psychology (e.g., Ito et al., 1998)
found that the human brain responds more strongly to
negative than positive information, and retains the
memory of negative information longer, even when
the behavioural response to the stimuli is over.
Negativity bias can arise due to negative infor­
mation’s greater veracity, specificity, diagnosticity,
and contagiousness than positive information
(Rozin & Royzman, 2001). A common theoretical
explanation for the negativity bias effect is based on
the “category diagnosticity approach”, which
explains that consumers’ judgements and attitudes
towards objects are based on placing them into
different categories using existing informational
cues about the objects (Skowronski & Carlston,
1989). It further explains that some informational
cues are perceived as more diagnostic than others in
distinguishing between different categories and that
more diagnostic informational cues will have
a stronger influence on consumers’ judgements
and leave more lasting traces in their memory
than less diagnostic information (Skowronski &
Carlston, 1989).
Drawing on the category diagnosticity approach,
prior research shows that negative information can
be perceived as more diagnostic than positive infor­
mation for categorising objects into evaluative cate­
gories because social norms lead consumers to provide
positive information about products/services more
frequently than negative information, making the for­
mer more prevalent and the latter rarer (Chen & Lurie,
2013; Ketelaar et al., 2015). Therefore, “negative
reviews may have greater ‘surprise’ value to readers”
(Yin et al., 2012, p. 2). This is also consistent with the
“Pollyanna Hypothesis” that “there is a universal
human tendency to use evaluatively positive (E+)
words more frequently, diversely and facilely than
evaluatively negative (E-) words. Put even more sim­
ply, humans tend to ‘look on (and talk about) the
bright side of life’” (Boucher & Osgood, 1969, p. 1).
In other words, “as most products, whether low-,
average-, or high-quality, have positive attributes,
negative ones are much rarer. Hence, negative product
attributes are considered to be more characteristic of
poor-quality products than positive attributes are for
high-quality products” (Ketelaar et al., 2015, p. 653).
This position has been further corroborated by the fact
that a positivity bias is observed in limited occasions
where positive events are rarer than negative events
(e.g., manifestations of exceptional human ability;
Rozin & Royzman, 2001).
In addition, prior findings in psychology litera­
ture (Feldman, 1999; Skowronski & Carlston, 1987)
explain that negative messages are conceived as
more diagnostic because they are typically more
specific and convey more information than positive
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 719
messages. This happens because consumers often
describe negative experiences in greater details
than positive experiences. Moreover, the risk averse
nature of most humans leads them to pay closer
attention to negative messages to avoid and miti­
gate the risks associated with their decisions. As
a result, they find negative information that inform
them of the risks associated with their decisions as
more diagnostic than positive information, which
highlights the benefits.
Extrapolating the foregoing arguments to the
context of online reviews, we expect that the
lower frequency of NRs as well as their specificity
and focus on risks (rather than benefits) of consu­
mers’ decisions lead consumers to perceive them as
more diagnostic information for assessing pro­
ducts/services than their more common counter­
parts, PRs. This higher diagnosticity can lead
consumers to devote more attention and informa­
tion-processing resources and assign more weight
to NRs than to PRs in judgements and impression
formation. Therefore, the asymmetrical effect of
NRs (i.e., the negativity bias) is a function of their
perceived diagnosticity.
The diagnosticity judgement is a subjective assess­
ment contingent on contextual as well as individual
factors (Ahluwalia, 2002; Ketelaar et al., 2015). A piece
of information that is perceived as diagnostic for one
consumer in a specific context may not be perceived as
such by another consumer or in a different context. To
this end, several studies (e.g., Lane et al. (2021) and
Ahluwalia (2002)) have shown that when decision
makers critically process messages – i.e., “high infor­
mation elaboration”, negative messages are perceived
as more diagnostic than the comparative positive
information, leading to stronger negativity bias effects.
For example, Lane et al. (2021) show that experts are
more likely to engage in deep processing and elabora­
tion of information when they are presented with
negative information as compared to positive infor­
mation. Moreover, Ahluwalia (2002) shows that con­
sumers who desire to hold attitudes and beliefs that are
objectively valid and care about the accuracy of infor­
mation find the negative messages as more diagnostic
than the positive messages, leading to stronger nega­
tivity bias effects on their judgements as compared to
other consumers. These findings are consistent with
Taylor’s (1991) view that negative information stimu­
lates a special set of cognitive processes designed to
cope with the threat that involves elaborate informa­
tion processing. Similarly, Peeters and Czapinski
(1990) argue that, compared to positive information,
negative information can have greater veracity which
would require more cognitive elaboration to be eli­
cited. Against this backdrop, in this paper, we investi­
gate the role of information elaboration in negativity
720 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI
bias in the effects of online reviews. We draw on the
ELM to theorise about the contextual and individual
factors that can alter the negativity bias in the effects of
online reviews.
2.2. Elaboration likelihood model and negativity
bias
ELM explains that perceptions, impressions, and jud­
gements can be formed via two conceptually distinct
information processing routes representing the two
ends of the elaboration likelihood continuum: central
and peripheral information processing (Petty &
Wegener, 1998). When the elaboration likelihood is
high, people process and evaluate the object-relevant
information based on their prior experience with the
domain of the object (i.e., “attribute-oriented
thoughts” (Sujan, 1985)) which would result in the
formation of perceptions about the object that are
well articulated and bolstered by their prior experi­
ence. This is referred to as the central route of informa­
tion processing in ELM. However, when the
elaboration likelihood is low, the extent of processing
and scrutiny of information is significantly reduced
and people’s perceptions about the focal object are
formed as a result of less resource-demanding heur­
istics (i.e., “simple evaluative thoughts” (Sujan, 1985))
that do not require effortful processing of the object-
relevant information. This is referred to as the periph­
eral route of information processing in ELM (Petty &
Wegener, 1998).
Prior studies on the effects of message valence
explain that when the elaboration likelihood is high
(i.e., central route of information processing in ELM),
negative messages are perceived more diagnostic and
bear more influence on consumers’ decisions than
positive messages (Ahluwalia, 2002; Ketelaar et al.,
2015; Lane et al., 2021; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990).
This is because, in the central route of information
processing, consumers base their judgements on
effortful processing, detailed scrutiny, and the per­
ceived diagnosticity of the message content (Petty &
Wegener, 1998). Due to the non-normative nature of
negative information in most instances and its higher
perceived specificity and risk-focus, it tends to be
viewed as more novel and diagnostic, than more fre­
quent positive information (Ahluwalia, 2002;
Skowronski & Carlston, 1989), causing central route
processors to assign it greater weights during impres­
sion formation and decision-making, as compared to
positive information. Consequently, when conditions
favour the dominant use of the central route of infor­
mation processing, negative messages are expected to
be perceived as more diagnostic and produce greater
persuasion, as compared to positive messages, leading
to a negativity bias effect.
However, negativity bias is attenuated, eliminated,
or even reversed when consumers only rely on the
surface features of a message and its source in deci­
sion-making and the perceived diagnosticity of the
message content is less important in formation of
their judgements (Ahluwalia, 2002; Skowronski &
Carlston, 1987). This occurs when conditions favour
the dominant use of the peripheral route of informa­
tion processing for decision making (Petty &
Wegener, 1998). As a result, in the peripheral route
of information processing, the asymmetrical effect of
negative information – i.e., the negativity bias effect –
is less evident.
Given the importance of central versus peripheral
route of message processing for negativity bias, the
factors that can determine consumers’ route of mes­
sage processing can arguably be important determi­
nants of negativity bias. What directs consumers
towards the central versus the peripheral route of
information processing is contingent on contextual
as well as individual factors that shape consumers’
ability and motivation to elaborate on the content of
a given message (Petty & Wegener, 1998). In particu­
lar, the ELM, like other dual-process theories, argues
that because human cognitive resources are limited,
people cannot process the details of every single mes­
sage they receive in-depth.
Generally, the amount of information processing
effort expended is a function of an individual’s ability
and motivation to process a given message (Petty &
Wegener, 1998). Consumers with higher ability and
motivation to process a given message are more likely
to follow the central route of processing (i.e., higher
elaboration likelihood). Considering their need for
more diagnostic information, these consumers are
more likely to perceive negative information as diag­
nostic and persuasive, given the less common and
more novel, specific, and risk-focus nature of negative
information as compared to positive information,
leading to more pronounced negativity bias effects
(Ahluwalia, 2002; Lane et al., 2021). Therefore, higher
consumers’ ability and motivation to process a given
message can increase the likelihood of negativity bias
effects in their message processing. Against this back­
drop, we contend that consumers’ prior experience
with the context of an online review and their need
for cognition are two factors that can increase the
likelihood of negativity bias in the effects of online
reviews on consumers’ attitudes towards online
services.
2.3. Consumers’ prior experience with the online
service domain and negativity bias
Consumers’ prior experience with the context of
a given message increases their ability to process
the contents of the message (Qahri-Saremi &

Montazemi, 2016; Sujan, 1985). Prior experience
with the context of a message refers to consumers’
experience and familiarity with other products/ser­
vices that are within a similar context/domain as
the ones presented in the message. This provides
the consumers with the “cognitive schema” to scru­
tinise the message content (Peracchio & Tybout,
1996). This schema-based scrutiny and inference
allows the consumers to engage in an in-depth
elaboration and assessment of the diagnosticity of
the information within a message, manifested in
the central route of information processing.
However, without the prior experience to shape
their cognitive schema, consumers will simply lack
the reference point for assessing a message content
(Peracchio & Tybout, 1996). As such, they are more
limited in the depth of their elaboration, mani­
fested in the peripheral route of information pro­
cessing. In other words, the cognitive schema
determines the consumers’ ability for engaging in
central route of information processing. Those who
are less able to engage in central route of proces­
sing a message are likely to follow a peripheral
route in assessing the message. As a result, they
rely on the surface features of a message and its
source in decision-making and the perceived diag­
nosticity of the message content is less influential
in the formation of their judgements.
In the case of our study, consumers’ prior experi­
ence with the domain of the online service that is
presented in the online review provide a cognitive
schema for the consumers to scrutinise and evaluate
the content of the review and its diagnosticity (i.e.,
central route). Therefore, we contend that the atti­
tudes of consumers with higher prior experience
with the online service domain are more likely to be
influenced by the diagnosticity of review content. As
explained before, negative information is conceived to
be more diagnostic than positive information. Thus,
the negativity bias effects are expected to be more
pronounced in higher elaboration likelihood condi­
tions (i.e., central route). On this basis, we propose
the following hypothesis:
H1: The negativity bias in the effects of online review
content on consumers’ attitudes towards an online service
is stronger when consumers have higher prior experience
with the online service domain.
2.4. Consumers’ need for cognition and
negativity bias
Motivation to process a given message is another
important contingency factor for high elaboration like­
lihood even among consumers with high ability for
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 721
elaboration (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Prior research
has shown that consumers’ level of need for cognition is
an important determinant of consumers’ motivation to
elaborate on a message content (Cacioppo et al., 1996;
Srivastava & Sharma, 2012). Need for cognition is
a well-established individual characteristic manifested
in people’s disposition to engage in and enjoy thinking
(Cacioppo et al., 1996; Gupta & Harris, 2010; Wood &
Swait, 2002). In the persuasion literature, need for
cognition is conceptualised as the proclivity to process
information, which, distinct from intellectual ability,
predicts consumers’ motivation to evaluate products/
services (Gupta & Harris, 2010; Srivastava & Sharma,
2012; Wood & Swait, 2002).
ELM explains that both ability and motivation to
process a given message and elaborate on its content
are necessary conditions for a consumer to engage in
the central route of processing (Petty & Cacioppo,
1986). Without high motivation, consumers are less
likely to engage in effortful processing of the message
content, even when they have high prior experience
with its domain (Gupta & Harris, 2010). Against this
backdrop and given the higher likelihood of negativity
bias effects in the central route of processing, we con­
tend that higher levels of need for cognition can
strengthen the effects of prior experience with the
online service domain on the likelihood of negativity
bias in the effects of online reviews. To this end, we
postulate a second-order (three-way) moderation
hypothesis.
H2: Consumers’ level of need for cognition positively
moderates the effect of their prior experience with the
online service domain on the negativity bias in the
effects of online review content.
3. Methodology
3.1. Study context
In this study, we focus on the negativity bias in the
effects of online reviews’ contents on consumers’
attitudes before using online experience services.
Experience services are characterised by attributes
that cannot be objectively evaluated, rather need to
be experienced and subjectively evaluated by the
consumers before usage (Xiao & Benbasat, 2007).
Examples of online experience services include
online music services and online healthcare ser­
vices. Given the subjective and personal nature of
online reviews, they are an important source for
reducing consumers’ uncertainty towards evaluat­
ing online experience services. Therefore, we focus
on the online experience service context (called
“online service” in this paper).
722 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI
Consumers’ usage of an online service is a process that
occurs over time consisting of two main stages – pre-
usage and post-usage – with different decisions and
actions occurring at each stage (Montazemi & Qahri-
Saremi, 2015). Because, unlike the post-usage stage, con­
sumers in the pre-usage stage have no experience with
using the focal online service. Thus, external sources of
information about the focal online service, such as online
reviews, play an important role in determining their
attitude towards using the online service in this stage.
To this end, we focus on the effects of online reviews at
the pre-usage stage.
3.2. Subjects
Subjects in our experiment were 450 (43% women,
57% men) undergraduate (freshman, sophomore,
and junior) commerce students in a business school
in North America, with an average age of 19.6
(SD = 1.11). Student samples were used in prior ser­
vice adoption and online review studies (e.g., Yin et al.,
2014). Students’ participation in our study was volun­
tary and was compensated by a 2% bonus course
credit.
3.3. Experiment design
We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment to
assess the two hypotheses. We randomly assigned
subjects to six conditions based on a 3 × 2 between-
subject factorial design, as depicted in Table 1: three
different conditions (negative, positive, and no
reviews), in conjunction with two different conditions
to represent higher/lower prior experience with the
online service domain were manipulated between
subjects.
3.4. Role and design of the control group
Consistent with prior studies (e.g., Ketelaar et al.,
2015; Lane et al., 2021; Sundaram & Webster, 1999),
we used a “no-review” condition as a neutral control
group for validating the PR and NR manipulations.
The reason is that due to possibly asymmetrical and
subjective effects of negative versus positive informa­
tion on a consumer’s attitude, it was impossible to
ensure that any two-sided review would be perceived
as equally neutral by all our subjects. Indeed, this, in
itself, would have required a separate validation check.
Table 1. Experiment Design.
Higher Prior Lower Prior
Experience Experience
(Online Music) (Online Healthcare)
Negative Experimental Treatment Experimental Treatment
Review
Positive Review Experimental Treatment Experimental Treatment
No review Control Condition Control Condition
As a result, we used a no-review condition to ensure
the true neutrality of the control group in our
experiment.
Moreover, as will be presented later, we used
the control group for two objectives, namely vali­
dating the experimental manipulations for PR and
NR and conducting a post-hoc analysis. After
validating our PR and NR manipulations, the con­
trol group was removed from our data for the
main analysis of the negativity bias effects. The
reason is that for testing the negativity bias effects,
the absolute magnitude of changes in subjects’
attitudes attributed to NR had to be compared
with the absolute magnitude of attitudinal changes
attributed to PR. Therefore, a direct comparison
of the absolute magnitude of attitudinal changes
between NR and PR was sufficient for testing our
hypotheses, without a need to include the control
group in the main analysis. 1 This reduced our
sample size for the main analysis to 332, split
between NR and PR treatments.
3.5. Experimental manipulations
3.5.1. Higher/lower prior experience with the online
service domain
To manipulate the higher/lower consumers’ prior
experience of the online service domain, we
selected two different domains of the online experi­
ence services with which we expected our subjects
to have different levels of prior experience: online
music service to represent higher prior experience
domain (e.g., eMusic.com), and online healthcare
service to represent lower prior experience domain
(e.g., WebMD.com). Students are frequent users of
online music services (Kennedy et al., 2008). Thus,
we expected our subjects to have higher prior
experience of browsing for and listening to their
favourite music using online music services (web­
sites). However, considering that our subjects were
undergraduate commerce students, we expected
them to have lower prior experience of using
online healthcare services (websites), relative to
online music services. To assess the validity of
these manipulations, we asked our subjects about
the extent of their prior experience with the music/
healthcare online service (depending on which
online service domain was randomly assigned to
them). We used one question with a 5-point
Likert scale before the start of the experiment.
The results of ANOVA tests showed that, as
expected, our subjects had significantly higher
prior experience with the online music domain
than the online healthcare domain (Mean
Music = 2.92, SD Music = 1.05; Mean Health = 1.34,
SD Health = 0.63; F = 318.762, p < 0.001). This
result validated our experimental manipulation for

higher/lower prior experience with the online ser­
vice domain. Furthermore, to avoid the confound­
ing effects of major variations in online service
functionalities on our results, we selected online
services with comparable functionalities, as
explained in Appendix A.
3.5.2. Negative and positive reviews’ contents
(online review valence manipulations)
To manipulate the valence of online review con­
tent in our experiment, we developed four ficti­
tious NRs and four fictitious PRs for the
healthcare/music online services to nudge our sub­
jects’ perceptions against or for using the online
service (see samples in Appendix B). Prior
research has shown the importance of volume of
online reviews on consumers’ decisions (Duan
et al., 2008; Montazemi & Qahri-Saremi, 2014;
Ren & Nickerson, 2019). Therefore, controlling
the number of online reviews (to four online
reviews) across our experimental treatments
allowed us to control this effect. We randomly
selected eight online music services and eight
online healthcare services. Each fictitious online
review discussed an online healthcare/music ser­
vice (website) in terms of its usefulness, ease of
use, and trustworthiness, where NRs criticised
them and PRs endorsed them.
To control the potential confounding effects of
other factors, such as source credibility and online
review length and quality, all subjects were informed
that the reviews were from a credible source with
verified experience with the online service (for con­
trolling source credibility). Furthermore, the fictitious
positive/negative reviews had the same length (210
words). In addition, the level of justifications in each
fictitious online review was controlled to avoid any
confounding effects caused by the variations in the
quality of the online reviews. To that end, a pilot
study involving 35 Ph.D. students was conducted
where we asked the participants to assess the quality
of the content of the positive/negative online review,
which was randomly assigned to them, in terms of its
relevance to the focal online service and the clarity of
the arguments in it, using a single question with
5-point Likert scale. No significant difference between
the four experimental treatments was found in terms
of the review content quality (p= 0.71).
To check the validity of our manipulations for
PRs and NRs, we measured our subjects’ perceived
usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU),
and trust in the online service after reading the
reviews (i.e., the three online service attributes
that we discussed in our fictitious reviews), and
statistically compared them with those of the con­
trol group. The results of ANOVA tests showed
that as expected, subjects who received PRs had
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 723
significantly higher PU (ΔMean = 1.43, p = 0.02),
PEOU (ΔMean = 1.83, p = 0.001), and trust
(ΔMean = 1.84, p = 0.001) towards using the
online service compared to the control group.
Moreover, as expected, subjects who received
NRs had significantly lower PU (ΔMean = −3.93,
p = 0.000), PEOU (ΔMean = −2.74, p = 0.000),
and trust (ΔMean = −3.12, p = 0.000) compared to
the control group. These tests validated the
expected effects of the manipulated valence of
online reviews’ contents on consumers’ percep­
tions. Therefore, our valence manipulation was
validated.
3.6. Measures and factors
The measurement instruments for our factors are
provided in Appendix C. The dependent factor in
our study is consumers’ attitudes towards using an
online service, which represent users’ overall orien­
tation towards an online service. To measure this
factor, we adapted the measures from Pavlou and
Fygenson (2006) (e.g., “using [this website] is
a good idea”). Furthermore, for measuring PU,
PEOU, and trust that we used in our manipulation
check, we adapted scales from Pavlou and
Fygenson (2006) that are based on Ajzen and
Fishbein (1980)’s expectancy-value formulation
for measuring attitudinal beliefs. According to
expectancy-value formulation, these belief factors
were measured as the product term 2 of belief
strength (e.g., “[healthcare/music services] would
enhance my effectiveness in getting useful infor­
mation [healthcare/music]”), and the importance
of its outcome for the respondent (e.g., “For me,
getting useful information about [healthcare/
music] from [healthcare/music website] is impor­
tant”; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Pavlou & Fygenson,
2006). Furthermore, measures for the need for
cognition were adapted from Wood and Swait
(2002).
3.7 Experimental procedures
At the beginning of the experiment, all subjects
were asked to complete an online questionnaire
that collected their demographics and the extent
of their prior experience with the online music/
healthcare domain. Next, to avoid possible con­
founding effects of subjects’ prior firsthand use
experience with a particular online service while
ensuring their sufficient involvement with the
online service, we adapted the two criteria sug­
gested by Sundaram and Webster (1999) and Lim
and Lee (2019) as follows. First, a randomly
selected name of an online service (website) from
either a music or a healthcare list was displayed
724 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI
on the computer screen for each subject. The
subject was asked whether he/she had used it
before. If he/she had used the online service,
then another randomly selected name from the
list was presented on the screen until it reached
a name that the subject had not used before,
which was then assigned to the subject. This
allowed us to avoid the confounding effect of
subjects’ prior firsthand use experience of the
assigned online service. There was no incident in
which the subject had used all of the eight online
services in the list.
Second, all subjects (in control and treatment
groups) received a general and neutral description
of the assigned online service (see Appendix A).
The description explained what the online service
was about (music or healthcare services) and
described the features that it offered to its users,
without any positive or negative information about
the quality of those features. The descriptions were
the same within each domain (music or healthcare)
except for the name of the assigned online service.
To ensure that students were sufficiently involved
in the online services, in the description for the
online music service, they were told that they can
search for their favourite music songs, albums, and
singers in its directories and stream them, and in
the description for the healthcare domain, subjects
were told that it offers healthcare contents includ­
ing information about stress, its symptoms and
effects, and stress management techniques. These
topics are considered to be relevant to student
subjects (Kennedy et al., 2008; Misra & McKean,
2000). For verification, regarding relevance of stress
management, we asked subjects in the healthcare
condition about the importance of stress manage­
ment for them (see Appendix C), using a 5-point
Likert scale. Their ratings (Mean = 4.02, SD = 0.23)
were significantly larger than the midpoint of 3
(p < 0.001), which verified the relevance of stress
management to them.
Next, subjects in the treatment conditions were
shown four distinct PRs or NRs regarding their
assigned online services (see Appendix B). This step
was skipped for the control group (i.e., no-reviews
condition). Next, subjects were asked to complete an
online survey regarding their evaluations of PU,
PEOU, trust, and attitude towards using the assigned
healthcare/music online service. We used these data
for manipulation checks, and to measure respondents’
attitudes towards the online service.
This design of experiment is in accordance with
Helson’s (1964) adaptation-level theory that consu­
mers’ judgements are based on their prior experiences,
context, and a stimulus (i.e., our experimental treat­
ments: NRs and PRs). In particular, by ensuring sub­
jects’ no prior firsthand use experience with the
assigned online service and by offering the same
description to all subjects within each domain, we
maintained a common frame of reference for all sub­
jects (in control and treatment conditions), against
which we then captured the effects of our experimental
treatments: NRs and PRs.
3.8 Preliminary analysis
Before testing the hypotheses, we conducted a series of
preliminary analyses to ensure that statistical and
methodological artefacts did not affect our measure­
ments and analyses. Results demonstrated high relia­
bility and good construct validity scores for the
factors, no serious skewness and kurtosis were
detected, and square roots of average variance
extracted were larger than 0.7 and the corresponding
correlations for each factor which indicated acceptable
validity of the factors (see Appendix D for details).
4. Analysis and results
4.1. Model specification
The full regression model for testing our two hypoth­
eses is depicted in equation (1).
ATT, the dependent variable, is the magnitude of
effects on consumers’ attitudes towards the online
service. The effects of PRs and NRs on consumers’
attitudes differ in terms of both the direction of the
effect and the magnitude of the effect. The direction of
the effects alters because an effective PR is expected to
increase the attitude, while an effective NR is expected
to decrease the attitude. The magnitude of the effect
(ATT in our model) is the absolute extent of change in
the attitude as a result of PRs and NRs, regardless of
their direction (increase or decrease). The negativity
bias occurs when NRs have a significantly larger mag­
nitude of effect on attitude, as compared to the PRs,
when the direction of effect is removed. Therefore, to
accurately estimate the extent of negativity bias, we
need to estimate the magnitude of the effect of NRs on
attitude as compared to the magnitude of the effect of
PRs on attitude, after removing the direction of the
effects (decrease and increase). To do so, we reversed
the attitude scores for NRs to compare their magni­
tudes with those of PRs.
NR in our model is a dummy variable (1: NR; 0: PR)
to estimate the extent of the effects of negativity bias
(b3 coefficient) on ATT (it estimates the unique mag­
nitude of the effects of NR on ATT as compared to
those of PR). As mentioned earlier, we excluded the

no-reviews (control) group from our data for estimat­
ing our model to enable the direct comparison of the
magnitude of the effects of NRs with those of PRs.
EXP is a dummy variable for prior experience with
the service domain (1: high; 0: low). The coefficient for
its first-order interaction term with NR (i.e., NR ×
EXP), b5, indicates the moderation effect of prior
experience on the negativity bias in the effects of online
review content. This result is used for testing H1.
NFG is a continuous variable with scores for the
need for cognition. The coefficient for its second-order
interaction term (i.e., NR × EXP × NFG), b9, indicates
the effect of need for cognition on the moderating
effect of prior experience on negativity bias in the
effects of online review content. Therefore, it is used
for testing H2. Age and gender (Female dummy vari­
able in equation (1)) are used as control variables.
Given the higher-order interaction terms in equa­
tion (1) which can change the interpretation of lower
order terms, we used hierarchical (fixed-order) regres­
sion approach (Cohen et al., 2003; De Jong, 1999) to
add the independent variables to our regression ana­
lysis step-wise: Step 1 only includes the control vari­
ables (i.e., Model 1); Step 2 adds the main effect of
negativity bias (i.e., NR) to Model 1 (i.e., Model 2);
Step 3 adds EXP and its first-order interaction term to
Model 2 (i.e., Model 3), which is used for testing H1.
Finally, Step 4 adds NFG and its first-order
and second-order interaction terms to Model 3 (i.e.,
Model 4). The coefficient of second-order interaction
term in Model 4 is used for testing H2.
4.2 Results
As depicted in Table 2, higher prior experience with
the online service domain significantly increases the
negativity bias in the effects of online review content
on consumers’ attitude towards an online service (b5
= 0.66, p = 0.000; see Model 3 in Table 2). Therefore,
H1 is supported. Figure 1 provides a more nuanced
view of this moderation effect. While the negativity
bias exists under both low and high prior experience
conditions, its magnitude of effects on attitude is
Table 2. Results of Hierarchical Multiple Regression.
Model 1
Constant (b0) 3.85 (0.000)
Age (b1) −0.02 (0.549)
Gender (b2) 0.08 (0.33)
NR (b3)
Prior Experience (EXP) (b4)
NR × EXP (b5)
Need for Cognition (NFG) (b6)
NR × NFG (b7)
EXP × NFG (b8)
NR × EXP × NFG (b9)
R2 0.004
ΔR2 (p-value) 0.004 (0.507)
Coefficients are unstandardised; p-values are in the parentheses
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 725
significantly larger in high prior experience condition
(i.e., online music service) as compared to low prior
experience (i.e., online healthcare service).
4.3 Post-hoc analysis: individual effects of NR and
PR
Moreover, as expected, our results show that higher
levels of need for cognition significantly strengthen the
moderation effects of prior experience with the online
service domain on the negativity bias in the effects of
online review content on consumers’ attitude (b9
= 0.82, p = 0.000; see Model 4 in Table 2). Therefore,
H2 is also supported. In particular, as depicted in
Figure 2, when need for cognition is high, the level
of prior experience with online service domain exerts
a larger impact on the negativity bias in online review
effects compared to when need cognition is low. These
results fully support our hypothesis that higher prior
experience with the online service domain and higher
levels of need for cognition disproportionately
increase the magnitude of the effects of NRs (as com­
pared to the effects of PRs) on consumers’ attitudes
towards an online service.
So far, the results provide strong support for the
strengthening effects of users’ prior experience with
the online service domain and need for cognition on
the negativity bias. Nevertheless, negativity bias is
a relative concept reflecting the comparative effect of
NR relative to those of PR on consumers’ attitudes. To
understand the individual effects of NR and PR at
different levels of prior experience and need for cogni­
tion, we conducted a post-hoc analysis. To that end,
we split our sample into eight subsamples based on 2
(high/low prior experience) x 2 (high/low mean-split
need for cognition) x 2 (NR + control groups/PR +
control groups). Then, we conducted eight separate
OLS regressions (one for each subsample) to test the
individual effects of NR and PR on the users’ attitude
as compared to the control group in the same condi­
tion. We controlled for the effects of users’ age and
gender in all eight regressions. As presented in Table 3,
the results show that when prior experience with the
Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
3.55 (0.000) 3.68 (0.000) 3.55 (0.000)
−0.02 (0.564) −0.02 (0.612) −0.01 (0.935)
0.06 (0.408) 0.03 (0.64) 0.04 (0.518)
0.53 (0.000) 0.20 (0.042) 0.07 (0.464)
−0.32 (0.001) −0.43 (0.000)
0.66 (0.000) 0.72 (0.000)
0.42 (0.000)
−0.37 (0.027)
−0.57 (0.000)
0.82 (0.000)
0.149 0.205 0.253
0.144 (0.000) 0.056 (0.000) 0.048 (0.000)
726 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI

Low EXP High EXP

4.4

p = 0.000
4.2

Manitude of Effect on Attitude

4
p = 0.037
3.8

3.6

3.4

3.2

3
PositiveReview NegativeReview

Figure 1. First-order (two-way) interaction effect of prior experience (EXP) on negativity bias in the effects of online reviews on
attitude (H1).

(1) High EXP, High NFG (2) High EXP, Low NFG
(3) Low EXP, High NFG (4) Low EXP, Low NFG
4.3

(1) p = 0.000
4.1
Magnitude of Effect on Attitude

3.9

(2) p = 0.006
3.7
(3) p = 0.320

(4) p = 0.010
3.5

3.3

3.1

2.9
Positive Review Negative Review

Figure 2. Second-order (three-way) interaction effect of need for cognition (NFG) and prior experience (EXP) on negativity bias in
the effects of online reviews on attitude (H2).

Table 3. OLS Regression Results for the Effects of PR and NR and their Comparisons based on Cumming (2009).
B 95% CI for
Prior Need for Online (absolute Absolute POL of Absolute CIs for NR and p-value for
Experience Cognition Reviews N Beta p-value value) Values of B PR POL
Low Low NR 72 −0.398 0.001 0.530 0.236 0.824 −0.01 < 0.010
PR 87 0.208 0.056 0.115 −0.003 0.233
Low High NR 76 −0.453 <0.001 0.745 0.407 1.082 0.24 < 0.050
PR 53 0.469 0.001 0.328 0.151 0.506
High Low NR 50 −0.460 0.003 0.644 0.310 0.978 −0.10 < 0.010
PR 56 0.151 0.275 0.090 −0.074 0.255
High High NR 86 −0.720 <0.001 1.259 0.996 1.522 −0.70 < 0.001
PR 88 −0.103 0.328 −0.069 −0.210 0.071

online service domain is low, both PR and NR signifi­
cantly influence consumers’ attitudes towards the
online service, almost regardless of their level of need
for cognition. However, when prior experience with
the online service domain is high, PR loses its potency
in influencing consumers’ attitudes, while NR main­
tains its significant effects.
Moreover, following Cumming (2009) approach,
we calculated the proportion overlap (POL) between
confidence intervals for absolute values of coefficients
for NR and PR in the regressions for each of the eight
conditions. POL value between 14% and 50% is
approximately equivalent of p < 0.05, POL value
between −37% and 14% is approximately equivalent
of p < 0.01, and POL value less than −37% is approxi­
mately equivalent of p < 0.001 (Cumming, 2009).
As presented in Table 3, when prior experience is
high, the difference between the effects of NR and PR
grows larger as users’ level of need for cognition
increases; so much that, when both prior experience
with the online service domain and need for cognition
are high, the PR has the smallest effect across all
conditions, while the NR has the largest effect, and
consequently the p-value of difference between their
coefficients is the smallest. Therefore, the moderation
effects that we observed on the negativity bias can be
attributed to both weakening of PR effects and strength­
ening of NR effects, at the same time, as prior experi­
ence with the online service domain and need for
cognition increase.
5. Discussion
5.1. Contributions to research
Leidner (2020) describes a theoretical contribution as
“ . . . insights that are unexpected, surprising, or coun­
terintuitive (e.g., nonobvious) . . . ”. One counterintui­
tive contribution of this study is showing that the
asymmetrical effects of NR contents are more pro­
nounced among the experienced and thoughtful con­
sumers. However, the consensus in the prior online
review research has implicitly or explicitly been that
online review valence is a peripheral cue (a heuristic)
that predominantly influences novice consumers, as
compared to experienced and engaged consumers
(Qahri-Saremi & Montazemi, 2019; Wu, 2013). NRs
have often been attributed to the negative emotional
state (e.g., anger) of the reviewers, rather than the
product/service attributes (Kim & Gupta, 2012; Qahri-
Saremi & Montazemi, 2019; Wu, 2013). On this basis,
the prior research on online review valence has argued
that “negative information might grab the attention
more easily, but attention alone does not guarantee the
value of the information” (Wu, 2013, p. 977), and has
concluded that “bad is not necessarily stronger than
good in relation to the perceived value of consumer-
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 727
generated reviews” (Wu, 2013, p. 978). The consensus
based on these findings is that negativity bias does not
influence experienced and thoughtful consumers’ atti­
tudes towards the products/services, because as per
dual-process theories (e.g., ELM), these consumers
are expected to rely on the central route of informa­
tion processing where perceived diagnosticity of infor­
mation is the main driver of influence.
In this study, we have directly tested this idea by
focusing on the valence of the content of online reviews.
Contrary to the implied consensus discussed above, our
findings show that the asymmetrical effects of NR con­
tents are more pronounced among the experienced and
thoughtful consumers. Our post-hoc findings show that
NRs are highly influential for both groups of consumers
(novice and experienced) and comparing their effects
with the effects of PRs reveals the disproportionate
effects of NRs on the experienced and thoughtful con­
sumers. While both PRs and NRs can move the attitu­
dinal needle for novice consumers, only the NRs can do
so for experienced and thoughtful consumers. As such,
our results present the negative information as an ele­
ment of message diagnosticity in online review content
and a central cue that disproportionately influence the
experienced and thoughtful consumers’ attitudes. Our
findings provide a new perspective on the importance of
NRs and the negativity bias in the effects of online
reviews.
Another important issue that our findings illuminate
is the importance of the operationalisation of message
valence in the online review studies. Prior studies have
largely operationalised the valence based on the star
ratings attached to the online reviews, with a one-star
rating representing a very negative and a five-star rating
representing a very positive valence (Chevalier &
Mayzlin, 2006; Wu, 2013). In this paper, we implemen­
ted and tested the effects of valence of the content of the
online reviews, while masking the effects of different star
ratings (i.e., star ratings were not presented to the sub­
jects). As a result, our findings show that NRs can be
perceived as more diagnostic by experienced and
thoughtful consumers, which brings to question the
predominant assumption in the extant literature that
negativity bias is a function of peripheral processing.
Nevertheless, scholars should be cautious in extending
these findings to contexts where valence is operationa­
lised via star ratings only (e.g., Chevalier et al., 2018).
This is because experienced and thoughtful consumers
predominantly rely on the elaboration and scrutiny of
the online review contents, while the star rating is
a simple heuristic that is disproportionally attractive to
consumers who do not engage in the scrutiny of the
online review contents (Nazlan et al., 2018). NRs tend to
include more concrete and detailed information (Yin
et al., 2012), but such informational value could only
be realised by the consumers who read the NR content
(text) rather than those who only rely on the star ratings.
728 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI
This emphasises the importance of how valence is oper­
ationalised in the online review studies, which in turn
determines the type of consumers (e.g., experienced vs.
novice) who are more likely to be affected by the nega­
tivity bias.
5.2. Implications for practice
Recently, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
fined a company, Fashion Nova, a popular online
fashion retailer, $4.2 million for concealing NRs
from being posted to its website. “Deceptive review
practices cheat consumers, undercut honest busi­
nesses, and pollute online commerce”, said Samuel
Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer
Protection in a statement. “Fashion Nova is being
held accountable for these practices, and other firms
should take note” (D’Innocenzio, 2022). Thus, con­
cealing NRs is not a viable long-term strategy to avoid
their adverse effects on firms. Instead, firms should opt
to understand the adverse effects of NRs and devise
appropriate response strategies to mitigate these nega­
tive effects. In this paper, we show that the effects of
NRs are stronger and more consequential for online
service providers as compared to PRs’ because more
experienced and thoughtful consumers are more likely
to engage with and be influenced by NR contents.
Moreover, the opinions of this group of consumers
are usually more influential on others, given their
prior experience and depth of scrutiny. Therefore,
attending to NR in a timely manner and offering
effective responses to consumers’ concerns in these
reviews in a way that addresses the core arguments
in them can be important to manage their impacts. If
a NR is not responded to or resolved in a timely
fashion, it can influence some of the most important
consumers and sparks “online firestorms” (Herhausen
et al., 2019). Indeed, the timeliness of a firm’s
responses to NRs improves the firm’s performance,
whereas responses to PRs do not have such effects
(Chung et al., 2020).
In this vein, prior findings that the investors seek
information about the firm’s performance from online
review contents are noteworthy (Tirunillai & Tellis,
2012). Investors often have higher prior experience
with the service domain (they have industry focus)
and have high motivation to elaborate on online
reviews as informational cues for their financial deci­
sions (Aggarwal et al., 2012). As such, they fit the
profile of experienced and thoughtful readers of online
reviews that can be significantly affected by negativity
bias (Aggarwal et al., 2012). This further emphasises
the importance of effective management of NRs.
Furthermore, the fact that the scarcity and infre­
quency of NRs (as compared to PRs) render them
more diagnostic for experienced and thoughtful con­
sumers suggest that some organisational response
strategies, such as “Channel Change” or
“Censorship” of NRs (Howell et al., 2012), can have
adverse consequences by making them even more
scarce and thereby more diagnostic for this group of
arguably influential consumers. This can give the NRs
even more potential for sparking an online firestorm
(Herhausen et al., 2019).
5.3. Limitations and avenues for future research
We acknowledge several limitations in our study
that can open avenues for future research. First,
we assessed negativity bias using fictitious one-
sided reviews. A one-sided review contains only
positive or negative content, not both. Therefore,
an extension of our study is assessing negativity
bias within the two-sided reviews, which include
both positive and negative content. Second, while
we controlled the volume of online reviews (four
reviews) in our experimental treatments and
masked the potential effects of aggregated star
ratings (by not presenting it to our subjects) in
this study, extant research shows the importance
of these factors affecting consumers’ judgements
towards products/services. Therefore, one promis­
ing area for the future studies is looking into the
importance of the variability of these two factors
in addition to the valence of online review content
for the effect of negativity bias. Third, while the
two online service domains (music and health
care) differentiate in the level of our subjects’
prior experience with them, there might be other
differences between them (e.g., utilitarian versus
hedonic use). Future studies can investigate these
additional differences and their role in negativity
bias in the effects of online review content.
Fourth, similar to prior experimental studies in
IS literature (e.g., Yin et al., 2014), the subjects in
our study were students, not actual consumers.
We ensured their involvement with the online
services in our experiment via a neutral descrip­
tion that we provided to them, as outlined in the
Methodology section. While we believe this mini­
mised possible adverse effect of student sample on
our results, future study can validate our findings
using non-student consumers of online services.
Fifth, we focused on the “consumption” side of
the effects of NRs that may present only a partial
picture of the negativity bias phenomenon.
A complementary perspective on the effect of
negativity is its influence on the “production”
side. Prior research in social psychology has
shown that negativity can improve the quality
and effectiveness of persuasive messages and social
influence strategies (Forgas, 2007). In the online
review context, this would mean that the consu­
mers with negative experiences about products/

services are likely to post higher quality online
reviews. While we controlled for the effects of
message quality in our experiments, this means
that NRs may not be only perceived as more
diagnostic by receivers, but they may also be of
higher quality than PRs. The production effect of
negativity on online review quality is an important
area for future research.
Finally, while we focused on the valence of online
review content (NR and PR) to investigate the negativity
bias effects in this paper, there are additional ways in
which the valence framing can be discussed. For exam­
ple, Levin et al. (1998) proposed a typology of three
different kinds of valence framing effects: (1) “attribute
framing”, where a single attribute of a product/service is
the subject of the valence manipulation, and the depen­
dent measure of interest is the extent of favourability or
unfavourability of the product/service; (2) “risky choice
frames”, where discrete choices between a risky option
and a riskless option of equal expected value depend on
whether the options are described in positive (i.e., gains)
or in negative (i.e., loss) terms; and (3) “goal framing”,
where the issue is framed to focus on the potential to
obtain gain (positive frame) or the potential to avoid loss
(negative frame), while both frames can enhance the
favourability of the issue. Prior research has shown that
the asymmetrical effects of negative versus positive can
appear in all three kinds of framing effects (Levin et al.,
1998). However, to the best of our knowledge, the nega­
tivity bias research in the online review context has been
predominantly focused on the “valence”, rendering the
need for further investigation into the effects of the other
types of framing in online review literature.
Endnotes
1. Nevertheless, our post-hoc analysis presents an alter­
native, more complex way of testing the hypotheses
that involves the control group. The post-hoc findings
are consistent with our main results.
2. The product term is the product of two factors mea­
sured using 5-point Likert scales. Therefore, the
resulted scale is [1, 25].
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
author(s).
ORCID
Hamed Qahri-Saremi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4933-
834X
Ali Reza Montazemi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4069-
2844
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 729
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732 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI

APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: HEALTHCARE AND MUSIC ONLINE
SERVICES
We randomly selected eight in healthcare and music
domains with similar functionalities in each category,
as outlined in Table (A1). Subjects were randomly
assigned an online music/healthcare service that they
had not used before and received a general (neutral)
description of the service. The descriptions were the
same for all online services within each domain (music
or healthcare) (Table (A2)).

Table A1. Criteria Used in Selecting our Healthcare and Music Online Services.
Criteria for Healthcare Websites
The website has information for a directory of healthcare contents, in
particular stress management techniques.
The website provides reviews on medicines and supplements.
The website has information about eating/diet/fitness.
The website has symptom check functionality.
The website does not require a paid subscription.
Criteria for Music Websites
The website has a search functionality to explore favourite singers, music
albums, and song tracks.
The website has music streaming functionality.
The website has online purchase functionality for purchasing favourite
song tracks and albums.
The website has the functionality of users’ forums and reviews about
singers, music albums, and song tracks.
The website does not require a paid subscription.

Table A2. Descriptions Provided for Online Healthcare and Music Services.
Description for Healthcare Online Services (90 words)
[WebMD.com] is an online healthcare service that offers medical information and news about different health problems and their possible treatments. It
has information about a directory of different healthcare related contents. This includes contents on different types of stress, their symptoms and
effects, and techniques for managing stress. [WebMD.com] provides users’ forums and reviews to discuss different treatments, medicines and
supplements, and information about eating/ diet/ fitness. It has a symptom check functionality that suggests possible causes for the symptoms. It
does not require a paid subscription for using it.
Description for Music Online Services (90 words)
[eMusic.com] is an online music service that offers a directory of song tracks and albums from different singers and across different genres. It offers
a search functionality for all users to find their favourite singers, music albums and songs in its directory. [eMusic.com] offers a music streaming
functionality for users to listen to songs online. It provides different users’ forums and reviews to discuss different singers, music albums, and song
tracks. It offers albums and individual song track for purchase and does not require a paid subscription for using it.
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS 733

APPENDIX B: SAMPLES OF FICTITIOUS

REVIEWS

An Example of a Fictitious Negative Review (210 words)

The very first thing to know about asking medical questions on [WebMD.com], is that you cannot be examined over the internet. For that reason alone,
asking specific questions are unrealistic. The second thing to know about asking questions on [WebMD.com] is that anyone can provide you with
incorrect information. Suggestions and/or diagnoses made on the internet can hurt you, should you follow the advice. On [WebMD.com],
I encountered several broken links. For example, clicking on the “bursitis” in the list of Symptom Checker conditions generates an error. I was also
somewhat disappointed with the small area of text used to describe the conditions. It needs to be larger to avoid a lot of scrolling for viewing its
content. Another concern for me is that [WebMD.com] makes money from ads on its site. An online depression-screening test ad on page for stress
management directs visitors to Eli Lilly’s antidepressant Cymbalta. My concern is that most people who read that page are probably not depressed, or
even consider themselves depressed, but these ads presented by [WebMD.com] can lure them into possibly considering taking an antidepressant!
This is a major trust issue for me. Also, for running these ads they probably collect my health information, which is a major privacy concern for me.
An Example of a Fictitious Positive Review (210 words)

As doctors become busier and more expensive, I regularly use [WebMD.com] for educating myself about healthcare issues that matter to me. This has
also helped me to choose the right health care providers and doctors more effectively, explore lifestyle behaviours that keep me fit and healthy, and
research medications and therapeutic options. [WebMD.com] is supported by the medical community. The language is purposefully non-technical so
anyone can understand. [WebMD.com]’s interactive tools are an easy way to figure out more about your health – and they’re organised from A to
Z by category for easy access. These little quizzes and fun tools make it easy to evaluate various health concerns, from weight to environment and
everything in between. [WebMD.com] has stellar reputation. It covers a vast array of healthcare topics with information about symptoms, causes,
cures, medications, and prevention options available in general medical practice. It is run by a team of Physicians with top medical degrees. [WebMD.
com] has been awarded TRUSTe’s Privacy Seal signifying that its privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe for compliance with
requirements including transparency, accountability and choice for collection and use of your personal information. Privacy of my healthcare
information and data is very important to me, so this helped me trust [WebMD.com].

APPENDIX C: MEASURES

Table C1. Measurement Instruments (1: Strongly Disagree – 5: Strongly Agree).

Attitude Towards Using
Need for Cognition
Perceived Usefulness
Perceived ease of Use
Trust
Stress Management
Importance
Using [this website] is a good idea.
[This website] makes [health management/finding my favourite music] more interesting.
Using [this website] is fun.
I like working with [this website].
I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my thinking abilities
(reversed)
I try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is a likely chance, I’ll have to think in depth about something
(reversed)
I only think as hard as I have to (reversed)
The idea of relying on thought to get my way to the top does not appeal to me (reversed)
The notion of thinking abstractly is not appealing to me (reversed)
[This website] would be useful for getting valuable information about [music/healthcare].
For me, getting valuable information about [music/healthcare] from [this website] is important.
[This website] would enhance my effectiveness in getting useful information about [music/healthcare].
For me, getting useful information about [music/healthcare] from a [this website] is important.
My interaction with the [this website] is clear and understandable.
I believe that it is easy to get the [this website] to do what I want It to do.
Overall, I believe that the [this website] is easy to use,
Learning to operate the [this website] is easy for me.
[This website] would be competent in providing objective information about [music/healthcare].
For me, getting objective [music/healthcare] information from [this website] is important.
[This website] would be honest in providing accurate information about [music/healthcare].
For me, getting accurate [music/healthcare] information from [this website] is important.
Stress management is an important issue for me.
I have been affected by stress, lately.
Stress management has been on my mind, lately.
734 H. QAHRI-SAREMI AND A. R. MONTAZEMI

APPENDIX D: PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS

Table D1. Descriptive Statistics, Correlations, & Square Root of AVE (diagonal).
Mean (SD) Skew (Kur) Alpha 1 2 3 4 5 6
1 NFC 3.67 (0.64) −0.25 (−0.35) 0.71 0.71
2 Attitude 2.82 (0.78) −0.36 (−0.39) 0.87 −0.09 0.92
3 PU 10.09 (4.98) 0.28 (−0.71) 0.87 −0.03 0.63 0.92
4 PEOU 12.01 (4.84) 0.10 (−0.29) 0.83 −0.01 0.52 0.59 0.91
5 Trust 10.27 (4.60) 0.24 (−0.43) 0.77 0.01 0.55 0.77 0.54 0.90
6 Age 19.64 (1.11) 2.17 (5.69) 1.00 −0.14 0.12 0.06 −0.01 0.03 1.00
7 Gendera 0.43 (0.50) 0.29 (−1.93) 1.00 −0.17 0.06 0.11 0.13 0.03 −0.04
a
0: men, 1: women; PU: Perceived Usefulness; PEOU: Perceived Ease of Use; NFC: Need for Cognition; Skew: Skewness; Kur: Kurtosis.