Zhanfei Lei
Associate Professor
Zhanfei Lei is an associate professor of Information Systems at the Isenberg School of Management. Her research focuses on user-generated content, biases and heuristics, and human-AI interaction. She primarily uses lab experiments, while also applying methods such as surveys, econometrics, and text mining.
She has published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Production and Operations Management.
She currently serves as an Associate Editor for Information & Management and an editorial review board member for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. She has received several awards, including the Workshop on E-Business (WeB) Best Paper Award in 2025 and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) Best Associate Editor Award in 2024.
She earned a PhD in IT management from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MS from the University of Pittsburgh, and a bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University in China.
Education
Academic Appointments
Recent Honors / Awards
Research Interests
Teaching Interests
- Business Intelligence and Analytics
- Database Management for Analytics
Selected Publications
Lei, Z., Yin, D., & Zhang, H. (2025). Deliberative or Automatic: Disentangling the Dual Processes Behind the Persuasive Power of Online Word-of-Mouth. MIS Quarterly, 49(1), 331-346.
Lei, Z., Yin, D., & Zhang, H. (2023). Positive or Negative Reviews? Consumers’ Selective Exposure in Seeking and Evaluating Online Reviews. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 24(4), 1162-1183.
Lei, Z., Yin, D., Mitra, S., & Zhang, H. (2022). Swayed by the Reviews: Disentangling the Effects of Average Ratings and Individual Reviews in Online Word-of-Mouth. Production and Operations Management, 31(6), 2393-2411. (Lead article).
Lei, Z., Yin, D., & Zhang, H. (2021). Focus Within or On Others: The Impact of Reviewers’ Attentional Focus on Review Helpfulness. Information Systems Research, 32(3), 801-819.