Explaining Reviewing Effort: Existing Reviews as Potential Driver

Christoph Rohde (), Alexander Kupfer () and Steffen Zimmermann ()
Additional contact information
Christoph Rohde: University of Innsbruck
Alexander Kupfer: University of Innsbruck
Steffen Zimmermann: Ulm University

A chapter in Innovation Through Information Systems, 2021, pp 422-436 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Online reviews systems try to motivate users to invest effort in writing a review since their success crucially depends on the reviews’ helpfulness. However, other factors might influence future reviewing effort as well. We analyze whether existing reviews matter for future reviewing effort. Analyzing a dataset from Google Maps which covers 40 sights across Europe with over 37,000 reviews, we find that reviewing effort – measured by the propensity to additionally write a textual review and (textual) review length – is negatively related to the number of existing reviews. Further, also the rating distribution of existing reviews matters: If there is a large discrepancy between the existing ratings and the own rating, we observe more additional textual reviews. Our findings provide important implications for review system designers regarding the presentation of review metrics: changing or omitting the display of review metrics for potential reviewers might increase their reviewing effort.

Keywords: Online reviews; Reviewing effort; Online review platform; Existing reviews (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:lnichp:978-3-030-86800-0_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030868000

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-86800-0_29

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organization from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().