Product Ratings and Externalities

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: de Haan, Thomas; Knutsen, Magnus Vage
• 署名单位: University of Bergen; BI Norwegian Business School; BI Norwegian Business School
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.04684
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Reputation; repeated games; externalities; Market experiment; asymmetric information

摘要

In this article, we investigate how information about production externalities, such as ecolabels, can be presented to create market pressure on firms to reduce these externalities. Specifically, we explore whether integrating information on externalities with consumer product ratings into a single combined rating can generate pressure to reduce externalities from all consumers, not just environmentally conscious ones. Theoretically, we demonstrate the existence of an equilibrium where producers invest in both high product quality and low production externalities. We show that under separate ratings, this equilibrium depends on a high proportion of green consumers, whereas a combined rating achieves similar results without such a requirement. More broadly, our model suggests that bundling ratings can compel producers to address niche concerns more effectively. We experimentally validate this prediction across two studies, confirming that bundling ratings significantly increases producer investment in additional attributes, such as reducing externalities, while maintaining the rating system's ability to incentivize high product quality.