Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: Mayzlin, Dina; Dover, Yaniv; Chevalier, Judith
• 署名单位: University of Southern California; Dartmouth College; Yale University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.8.2421
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 2421-2455
• 关键词: information; reputation; internet; persuasion; selection; sales; FIRMS; ebay

摘要

Firms' incentives to manufacture biased user reviews impede review usefulness. We examine the differences in reviews for a given hotel between two sites: Expedia.com (only a customer can post a review) and TripAdvisor.com (anyone can post). We argue that the net gains from promotional reviewing are highest for independent hotels with single-unit owners and lowest for branded chain hotels with multiunit owners. We demonstrate that the hotel neighbors of hotels with a high incentive to fake have more negative reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia; hotels with a high incentive to fake have more positive reviews on TripAdvisor relative to Expedia.