Discrete emotions effects on electronic word-of-mouth helpfulness: The moderating role of reviewer gender and contextual emotional tone

Abstract Using frameworks from the literature on emotion, cognitive processing and gender stereotypes, we extend existing research on online product review helpfulness by demonstrating that reviewer gender moderates the relationship between emotional content and review helpfulness and that readers' perceptions of reviewer credibility explain this effect. In the first study, experimental methods were used to demonstrate that the differential effect of angry vs. non-emotional reviews on review helpfulness was moderated by reviewer gender. Further, findings showed that the negative effect of anger on review helpfulness for female (but not male) reviewers was explained by lower reviewer credibility. In the second study, by analyzing product reviews from the Amazon web site, we found supportive evidence for the results of the first study on the relationship between female-expressed anger and review helpfulness. In addition, we explored the influence of gender stereotypes in terms of the relationship between anxiety and review helpfulness and compared it to anger. Study 2 also allowed us to explore the moderation effect of the contextual emotional tone of other reviews on the target product. Our findings highlight limitations in perceived helpfulness ratings due to gender stereotype biases and offer insights for various decision makers to better understand and manage review helpfulness.