Effect of online review comment recency on information processing: interaction between overall and recently posted individual ratings

This study aimed to examine the context-specific effect of online review recency on the processing of a review by tourists. It compared how tourists process the rating of a recently posted review, which is in conflict with the average rating of a group of online reviews, for evaluating a restaurant in two different contexts: when searching for a restaurant to visit in the near future (local search) and in the far future (pre-trip search). Based on the construal level theory, this study hypothesized that a recent rating affects tourists' perceptions of reviewed restaurants in the local search context more than it does in the pre-trip search context. Two experiments were conducted, and the results supported the hypotheses. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.