Abstract
Plagiarism has been a common phenomenon in the online environment. But the plagiarism phenomenon in online product reviews has been an uninvestigated issue, in spite of various studies in the product review domain. Readers of the plagiarized review could obtain the needed information for understanding the quality or other features of the products through reviews. Besides, the positivity or negativity of the plagiarized review might have different influences on people’s perception towards the target products. In this study, we first probe into the current situation of online review plagiarism. Then drawing on the frameworks of attribution theory, in order to examine the effects of plagiarism, we develop and test a model of reviews’ diagnosticity perception. The moderation effects of review rating and sentiment are also investigated on the relationship of review plagiarism and review perception. A research plan to analyze reviews collected from Amazon.com is discussed and the results are expected to shed lights upon the understanding of plagiarism behaviors for online reviews, contributing to both theoretical and managerial implications.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aral, S., Ipeirotis, P.G., Taylor, S.J.: Content and context: Identifying the impact of qualitative information on consumer choice. Available at SSRN 1784376 (2011)
Ghose, A., Ipeirotis, P.G.: Designing novel review ranking systems: predicting the usefulness and impact of reviews. In: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Electronic Commerce. ACM (2007)
Schindler, R.M., Bickart, B.: Perceived helpfulness of online consumer reviews: the role of message content and style. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 11(3), 234–243 (2012)
Resnick, P., Zeckhauser, R.: Trust among strangers in Internet transactions: Empirical analysis of eBay’s reputation system. Advances in Applied Microeconomics 11, 127–157 (2002)
Dellarocas, C., Gao, G., Narayan, R.: Are consumers more likely to contribute online reviews for hit or niche products? Journal of Management Information Systems 27(2), 127–158 (2010)
Dellarocas, C.: The digitization of word of mouth: Promise and challenges of online feedback mechanisms. Management Science 49(10), 1407–1424 (2003)
Dimoka, A., Hong, Y., Pavlou, P.A.: On product uncertainty in online markets: Theory and evidence. MIS Quarterly 36 (2012)
Pavlou, P.A., Liang, H., Xue, Y.: Understanding and mitigating uncertainty in online exchange relationships: a principal-agent perspective. MIS Quarterly, 105–136 (2007)
Mudambi, S.M., Schuff, D.: What makes a helpful online review? A study of customer reviews on Amazon.com. MIS Quarterly 34(1), 185–200 (2010)
Forman, C., Ghose, A., Wiesenfeld, B.: Examining the relationship between reviews and sales: The role of reviewer identity disclosure in electronic markets. Information Systems Research 19(3), 291–313 (2008)
Ghose, A., Ipeirotis, P.G.: Estimating the helpfulness and economic impact of product reviews: Mining text and reviewer characteristics. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 23(10), 1498–1512 (2011)
Yin, D., Bond, S., Zhang, H.: Anxious or angry? Effects of discrete emotions on the perceived helpfulness of online reviews. MIS Quart. (2013)
Peng, C.-H., et al.: How and When Review Length and Emotional Intensity Influence Review Helpfulness: Empirical Evidence from Epinions.com (2014)
Martin, D.E., Rao, A., Sloan, L.R.: Plagiarism, integrity, and workplace deviance: A criterion study. Ethics & Behavior 19(1), 36–50 (2009)
Martin, D.E.: Culture and unethical conduct: Understanding the impact of individualism and collectivism on actual plagiarism. Management Learning 43(3), 261–273 (2012)
Schmelkin, L.P., et al.: A multidimensional scaling of college students’ perceptions of academic dishonesty. The Journal of Higher Education, 587–607 (2008)
Dictionary, M.W.O.L.: What is plagiarism? (2007)
David, S., Pinch, T.J.: Six degrees of reputation: The use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems. Available at SSRN 857505 (2005)
Li, F., Du, T.C.: Who is talking? An ontology-based opinion leader identification framework for word-of-mouth marketing in online social blogs. Decision Support Systems 51(1), 190–197 (2011)
Metzger, M.J.: Making sense of credibility on the Web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58(13), 2078–2091 (2007)
Rieh, S.Y.: Judgment of information quality and cognitive authority in the Web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53(2), 145–161 (2002)
Yoo, K.H., Gretzel, U.: What motivates consumers to write online travel reviews? Information Technology & Tourism 10(4), 283–295 (2008)
Kelley, H.H., Michela, J.L.: Attribution theory and research. Annual Review of Psychology 31(1), 457–501 (1980)
Kelley, H.H.: Attribution theory in social psychology. In: Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. University of Nebraska Press (1967)
Jones, E.E., Davis, K.E.: From acts to dispositions the attribution process in person perception. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 2, 219–266 (1965)
Otterbacher, J.: Managing information in online product review communities: a comparison of two approaches. In: Proc. 16th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2008). Association for Information Systems (2008)
Skowronski, J.J., Carlston, D.E.: Social judgment and social memory: The role of cue diagnosticity in negativity, positivity, and extremity biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52(4), 689 (1987)
Skowronski, J.J., Carlston, D.E.: Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin 105(1), 131 (1989)
Hu, N., Zhang, J., Pavlou, P.A.: Overcoming the J-shaped distribution of product reviews. Communications of the ACM 52(10), 144–147 (2009)
Sanbonmatsu, D.M., Kardes, F.R.: The effects of physiological arousal on information processing and persuasion. Journal of Consumer Research, 379–385 (1988)
Wojciszke, B., Brycz, H., Borkenau, P.: Effects of information content and evaluative extremity on positivity and negativity biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64(3), 327 (1993)
Chen, Z., Lurie, N.H.: Temporal Contiguity and Negativity Bias in the Impact of Online Word of Mouth. Journal of Marketing Research 50(4), 463–476 (2013)
Folkes, V.S.: Recent attribution research in consumer behavior: A review and new directions. Journal of Consumer Research, 548–565 (1988)
Huang, P., Lurie, N.H., Mitra, S.: Searching for experience on the web: an empirical examination of consumer behavior for search and experience goods. Journal of Marketing 73(2), 55–69 (2009)
Kuan, K.K., et al.: What Makes a Review Voted? An Empirical Investigation of Review Voting in Online Review Systems. Journal of the Association for Information Systems 16(1), 48–71 (2015)
Pennebaker, J.W., Francis, M.E., Booth, R.J.: Linguistic inquiry and word count: LIWC [Computer software]. LIWC.net, Austin (2007)
Goes, P.B., Lin, M., Yeung, C.-M.A.: “Popularity Effect” in User-Generated Content: Evidence from Online Product Reviews. Information Systems Research (2014)
Pan, Y., Zhang, J.Q.: Born unequal: a study of the helpfulness of user-generated product reviews. Journal of Retailing 87(4), 598–612 (2011)
Greene, W.H.: Econometric analysis. Pearson Education, India (2003)
Rosenbaum, P.R., Rubin, D.B.: The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika 70(1), 41–55 (1983)
Wu, P.F.: In Search of Negativity Bias: An Empirical Study of Perceived Helpfulness of Online Reviews. Psychology & Marketing 30(11), 971–984 (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bao, Z., Chau, M. (2015). In Search of Plagiarism Behaviors: An Empirical Study of Online Reviews. In: Chau, M., Wang, G., Chen, H. (eds) Intelligence and Security Informatics. PAISI 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9074. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18455-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18455-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18454-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18455-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)