Exploring Latent Characteristics of Fake Reviews and Their Intermediary Role in Persuading Buying Decisions
本研究通过环境心理学视角，利用自然语言处理技术分析虚假评论的潜在产品特征，发现虚假评论无法有效影响产品推荐，提醒企业注意其有限的经济效益。
Abstract Online reviews play a significant role in shaping consumer purchase decisions. Accordingly, emergence of fake reviews has proliferated as an instrument to manipulate customers’ buying preferences. Such manifestation, however, lacks theoretical grounding and remains under researched due to two notable challenges: first, absence of conceptual underpinnings between consumers’ writing style and recommendation behavior. Second, little knowledge about the role of product characteristics underlying fake reviews and their influence on nudging product preferences. Through the lens of environmental psychology, this study uses an empirical investigation utilizing natural language processing (NLP) to uncover latent product-specific features underlying customer reviews and their impact on persuading buying preferences. As a major finding, we observe that characteristics underlying fake reviews, as opposed to genuine ones, fail to influence product recommendation or discouragement. Accordingly, we suggest firms permitting fake reviews on their portals to be aware of the limited economic advantages of such practices.