Impact of mobile device usage and temporal distance on consumer post-consumption evaluations: Evidence from TripAdvisor

• Using star rating and the ratio of positive sentiment represents consumer evaluations. • Mobile device usage negatively affects consumer evaluations, but temporal distance positively does. • Extending temporal distance alleviates the negative effect of mobile device usage on consumer evaluations. • Multiple robustness checks, e.g., instrumental variables, improve the reliability of our conclusions. • Additional analysis reveals there are asymmetric effects in both rating extremity and text sentiments. The proliferation of mobile devices allows consumers to post online reviews whenever they want, which has attracted increasing attention in the area of e-WOM. Combining social exchange theory with construal level theory, this research explores the impacts of mobile device usage and temporal distance on consumer post-consumption evaluations reflected by both review rating and text sentiments. We empirically analyzed 121,224 online reviews from TripAdvisor. The results show that the direct impact of mobile device usage on consumer evaluations is significantly negative, but temporal distance presents a positive effect. Moreover, temporal distance significantly alleviates the negative relationship between mobile device usage and consumer evaluations. Multiple robustness checks are conducted and support our conclusions. Additional subgroup analyses reveal that there is an asymmetric influence between the negative and positive rating extremity. Besides, the text sentiments from positive, negative, and moderate subgroups receive different effect sizes from our proposed treatments. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.