How buyers perceive the credibility of advisors in online marketplace: review balance, review count and misattribution

Journal of Trust Management

Table 1 Five types of advisors based on different review balance

Type	Description
I. Extremely negative Balanced	R < <S^a: number of positive ratings are significantly lower than number of negative ratings (R/S < 0.2^b)
II. Negative balanced	R < S: number of positive ratings are lower than number of negative ratings (0.2 ≤ R/S < 0.7)
III. Neutral balanced	R ≈ S: number of positive ratings are approximately the same as number of negative ratings (0.7 ≤ (R/S or S/R) ≤ 1)
IV. Positive balanced	R > S: number of positive ratings are larger than number of negative ratings (0.2 ≤ S/R < 0.7)
V.Extremely positive Balanced	R> > S: number of positive ratings are significantly larger than number of negative ratings (S/R < 0.2)

Note: ^a: R refers to number of positive ratings/reviews; S refers to number of negative ratings/reviews; ^b: this ratio is only used to describe a phenomenon (e.g., R < <S) and used to manipulate of advisors’ profiles. It is not a strict classification of advisors.