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Anderson, Michael; Magruder, Jeremy
The Economic journal (London), September 2012, Letnik: 122, Številka: 563Journal Article
Internet review forums increasingly supplement expert opinion and social networks in informing consumers about product quality. However, limited empirical evidence links digital word-of-mouth to purchasing decisions. We implement a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of positive Yelp.com ratings on restaurant reservation availability. An extra half-star rating causes restaurants to sell out 19 percentage points (49%) more frequently, with larger impacts when alternate information is more scarce. These returns suggest that restaurateurs face incentives to leave fake reviews but a rich set of robustness checks confirm that restaurants do not manipulate ratings in a confounding, discontinuous manner.
