Which online product reviews do consumers find helpful A signalling theory approach

In online marketplaces, consumers rely heavily on electronic word-of-mouth to make purchasing decisions. While previous research has explored what makes reviews 'helpful'. It often assumes they are inherently honest and accurate. How do consumers evaluate reviews when many may be spam or low-effort? We propose that information economics and signalling theory provide a useful theoretical framework to examine the problem of review informativeness. We model reviews as signals and argue that consumers associate certain signal characteristics (review features) with higher perceived informativeness. Analysing over 500,000 reviews, we find that reviews that are more observable and costly to produce, and that are less emotive and subjective, are perceived as more informative. Moreover, the impact of emotiveness and subjectivity varies depending on the product's characteristics. The findings support our model and suggest that signalling theory complements psychological approaches, and that atheoretical notions of review 'helpfulness' can be fruitfully theorised as informativeness.