Distal or proximal? Evidence from the effect of spatial distance on online review helpfulness

Purpose – With the proliferation of user-generated reviews, uncovering helpful online reviews and enhancing review quality are increasingly challenging for potential consumers and online review platforms, especially for experiential products. Spatial distance can be a determinant to helpfulness for online reviews. Design/methodology/approach – Based on online consumer review data, this study conducts quantitative analysis and robustness check to illustrate that the effect of spatial distance between locations of reviewers and hotels. Findings – This study demonstrates a positive between spatial distance and review helpfulness. From the perspective of textual content processing, review concreteness and review subjectivity play a mediating role between spatial distance and review helpfulness. The findings also indicate moderated mediation effects. Review valence strengthens the mediating role of review concreteness and review subjectivity between spatial distance and review helpfulness. Originality/value – Reviewers' location information has a continuous impact on review helpfulness, but the reasons for it are currently under-researched. Based on the construal level theory, this study explores the mechanism by which the persuasive effect of spatial distance can be explained by the characteristics of textual reviews.