Unveiling the Feeling Effect: How Sentiment Orientation Deceives Traditional Survey Findings in Marketing Research

This study inspected the influence of sentiment orientation (positive vs negative) on parameter estimation in marketing research models, specifically addressing gaps in previous research focused on online review platforms but not traditional surveys. Examining 627 participants assessing city residents' quality of life, the survey analyzed sentiment using the lexicon-based sentiment analysis. Three contextual factors affecting sentiment orientation—reasoning strength, cognitive strength, and factual information strength—were discovered. The analysis revealed higher adjusted R-squared scores for negative sentiment, suggesting potential errors in survey research when sentiment orientation is ignored. The study advocates combining automatic sentiment analysis with quantitative research findings to enhance survey accuracy.