Promotional Reviews

An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation

Bibliographic Data

ID19600730
AuthorsDina Mayzlin (0000-0003-1277-3994, University of Southern California), Yaniv Dover (0000-0002-9471-4746, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 100 Tuck Hall, Hanover, NH 03755 (e-mail: )), Judith A Chevalier (0000-0001-6645-2059, Yale University), Judith Chevalier (Yale School of Management)
Year2014
Volume104
Issue8
Pages2421-2455
Publication date2014-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Economic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-8282 • E-ISSN: 1944-7981
PublisherAmerican Economic Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1257/aer.104.8.2421
OpenAlexW3122952517
LanguageEN
Citations received59
References cited36

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. (JEL L15, L83, M31)

Advertising · Business · Economics · Empirical evidence · Incentive · Microeconomics · Unit (ring theory) · Auction Theory and Applications · Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Marketing · Psychology

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