Effects of Qualitative Factors in Reviews on Job Seekers’ Perceptions: Empirical Analysis of Online Employer Reviews

Compared with online product reviews, employer reviews include unique dimensions, such as reviewer demographics and evaluations of various organizational attributes. This study explores the role of qualitative factors within reviews on the perceived helpfulness of the review. To identify determinants of the helpfulness of employer reviews, we use a publicly accessible dataset from Glassdoor. For the analysis, a Tobit regression model is used, which is suitable for dealing with our left-censored data distribution. Our findings highlight the crucial influence of review readability, review comprehensiveness, review completeness, and the managerial response on the helpfulness of employer reviews. By proposing new measures for review comprehensiveness and completeness, this research enhances our knowledge of the qualitative factors that underpin the helpfulness of employer review in the realm of online employer reviews.