Digitizing Disclosure: The Case of Restaurant Hygiene Scores

Abstract

Collaborating with Yelp and the City of San Francisco, we revisit a canonical example of quality disclosure by evaluating and helping to redesign the posting of restaurant hygiene scores on Yelp.com. We implement a two-stage intervention that separately identifies consumer response to information disclosure and a disclosure design with improved salience–a consumer alert. We find score posting is effective, but improving salience further increases consumer response.

JEL Classification: D83, D12, D18