Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2421-2455 |
| Number of pages | 35 |
| Journal | American Economic Review |
| Volume | 104 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Aug 2014 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2014 by the American Economic Association.