Effects of multiple psychological distances on construal and consumer evaluation: A field study of online reviews

Abstract

Through a large‐scale field study of 166,215 online restaurant reviews, we found evidence of a distance boosting effect, whereby experiencing spatial distance (i.e., authoring a review about a geographically distant restaurant, rather than proximate one) and temporal distance (i.e., authoring a review after a lengthy delay, rather than immediately) jointly affect review positivity by amplifying consumers' high‐level construals. Although past research has explored the relationship between psychological distance, construal and consumer evaluation, the effects of various dimensions of distance have only been considered in isolation. Our research contributes to past work by testing the effects of experiencing two dimensions of psychological distance simultaneously on construal and consumer evaluations. Moreover, because our data contain naturalistic observations, our research includes a wide range of temporal and spatial distances. We found that the effect of one distance increases the effect of the other. Metaphorically speaking, the effect of one distance is boosted by another.

Other People’s Money: Money’s Perceived Purchasing Power Is Smaller for Others Than for the Self

“…Taking this a step further, future work could explore, more generally speaking, why sharing a similar effect on construal level leads respective dimensions to show subadditive effects. This would inform not only our research focus on money, but also the research on the effects of experiencing multiple dimensions of distance (Bar Anan et al 2007;Fiedler et al 2012;Huang, Burtch, Hong, and Polman 2016;Kim et al 2008;Maglio et al 2013aMaglio et al , 2013bWakslak 2012;Williams and Bargh 2008;Yan 2014;Zhao and Xie 2011). Based on our findings, the subadditive effect of psychological distance will extend to other, non-monetary resources, provided these resources have a similar effect on construal.…”

Expansive and contractive communication scope: A construal level perspective on the relationship between interpersonal distance and communicative abstraction

“…Before doing so, however, we note our specific focus on research that considers the distance between a speaker and an audience. Complementary research has considered distance related to the message's content (e.g., how one describes an event that will occur tomorrow vs. in a year from now; Bhatia & Walasek, ; Huang, Burtch, Hong, & Polman, ; Snefjella & Kuperman, ). This research generally sees communicative abstraction as an index of mental abstraction, and thus argues that people will communicate about distant content more abstractly because they mentally represent that content more abstractly.…”

“…Thus, the question of how communicative abstraction impacts message effectiveness appears to have a nuanced, rather than simple answer, begging for further research. Multiple factors such as psychological distance of the event being described (Kim et al, ; Schellekens, Verlegh, & Smidts, ), construal level or mindset of the listener (Nenkov, ; White, MacDonnell, & Dahl, ), valence of the arguments (Aerts, Smits, & Verlegh, ; Freling, Vincent, & Henard, ), psychological distance of the speaker (Berson & Halevy, ; Huang et al, ), and prior beliefs of the listener (Brügger, Morton, & Dessai, ; Kille, Eibach, Wood, & Holmes, ) may play a role in determining the effectiveness of concrete and abstract messages. The ways in which these different factors may interact to determine the effectiveness of messages as well as be influenced by factors such as goals and motives of the listener needs further consideration.…”

Psychological distance in consumer psychology: Consequences and antecedents

“…Increasing distance attunes consumers more to positive benefits (“The food was great!”) than to negative drawbacks (“Who cares that the server seemed aloof?”). For this reason, restaurant reviews become increasingly favorable when they are authored by recommenders who live increasingly far from dining venues and who compose reviews increasingly later after their dining experiences (Huang, Burtch, Hong, & Polman, ; see also Soderberg et al, ).…”