When Are Two-Sided Reviews More Persuasive?: The Moderating Role of Regulatory Focus in Online Review Evaluation

In the digital marketplace, online consumer reviews play a critical role in shaping consumers’ decision-making processes. While prior research has shown that two-sided reviews those that include both positive and negative information are often perceived as more credible and persuasive, the effectiveness of such messages may depend on individual motivational orientation. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, this study investigates how consumers’ regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention) moderates the effect of review sidedness (one-sided vs. two-sided positive reviews) on attitude toward the review. Focusing on one-sided positive and two-sided positive reviews, we conducted a scenario-based experiment with 123 participants. The results show that prevention-focused consumers evaluated two-sided reviews more favorably than one-sided reviews, as they perceived the former as more credible. In contrast, promotion-focused consumers showed no significant difference in attitude based on review sidedness. Moreover, review credibility mediated the interaction effect between review sidedness and regulatory focus on attitude toward the review. These findings contribute to the electronic word-of-mouth literature by identifying regulatory focus as a key individual-level moderator and offer practical insights for firms seeking to design more credible and psychologically congruent review content in digital platforms.