The impact of infectious disease threat on emotional electronic word-of-mouth during the covid-19 pandemic

This study investigates how infectious disease threats influence consumers’ generation and perceptions of emotion-embedded reviews, focusing on the trustworthiness and helpfulness of the reviews in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Through three studies–an empirical analysis of actual review data (Study 1) and two experimental studies (Studies 2 and 3)–we find that the perception of threat from an infectious disease results in more anxiety-embedded reviews but not anger-embedded reviews. More importantly, from the viewers’ perspective, our findings further demonstrate that the perceived helpfulness of anxiety-embedded reviews decreases with the perceived threat, but not for anger-embedded reviews. This effect is mediated by a decrease in the perceived trustworthiness of reviews, indicating that a heightened level of anxiety from an external threat makes consumers discount the informational value of anxiety-embedded reviews. With an unprecedented surge in online shopping during and after the pandemic, this research offers important implications regarding shifts in both generation and usage of online reviews in response to external infectious disease threats.