When Did They Post It? How Temporal Markers Influence the Persuasiveness of Online Reviews
研究发现，在线评论附带的近时时间标记（如“一天前购买”）会降低评论的说服力，因为消费者推断评论者经验不足；远时标记则相反，且该效应在正负评论中均成立。
ABSTRACT Before buying a product, consumers often seek the opinions of others who have past experience with it, for example, by browsing online reviews. This research finds that the persuasive impact of such reviews depends on their temporal context: Consumers view the same review as less persuasive when tagged with proximate temporal markers (e.g., “Bought this one day ago”) versus distant temporal markers (e.g., “Bought this one year ago”). This happens because consumers infer from temporal markers that the reviewer must be (in)sufficiently experienced. These effects emerged both in the field (Experiment 1) and in controlled contexts using varied products (Experiments 2a, 2b) and across valence, such that proximate temporal markers undermined recommendations from positive reviews but also softened criticisms from negative reviews (Experiments 3, 4a,b). Accordingly, the effects were moderated by conditions that restored perceptions of the reviewer's experience in other ways beyond time (Experiments 5–7). Together, these findings highlight how consumers draw reviewer inferences from temporal markers in reviews, which bear on the review's persuasiveness. The undermining impact of proximate temporal markers may be increasingly relevant in today's online review landscape, where speedy reviews have become the expected norm. Temporal markers may wield unintended effects on review persuasion, holding the review constant.