The Pitfalls of Review Solicitation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on TripAdvisor

Management Science (Forthcoming)

55 Pages Posted: 27 Jan 2022 Last revised: 21 Nov 2023

See all articles by Baojun Gao

Baojun Gao

Wuhan University

Jing Wang

Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Xiaojie Ding

Wuhan Textile University

Yue Guo

Southern University of Science and Technology

Date Written: October 31, 2023

Abstract

This study examines the effect of firms’ participation in platform-endorsed review solicitation programs on consumers’ online review generation. We leverage a natural experiment on TripAdvisor, which launched a review solicitation program that allows hotels to collect reviews directly from guests after their stays with the aid of certified connectivity partners. Applying a two-stage difference-in-differences approach to a panel dataset of online reviews for a matched set of hotels across TripAdvisor and Expedia, we find that hotels’ participation in the review solicitation program results in a 34.3% increase in review volume, a 0.151 increase in review rating, but a 16.9% decrease in review length. Review solicitation, however, generates a notable negative spillover effect on the volume of organic reviews. Specifically, the volume of organic reviews is reduced by 15.5% after hotels start soliciting reviews. We provide evidence that the motivational crowding-out effect plays an important role in driving this negative spillover. Further analyses reveal that the effects of review solicitation are heterogeneous with respect to hotels of different types and consumers with different demographic and behavioral characteristics. Finally, using a novel structural topic model, we detect a significant shift in review content from specific and concrete topics to general and abstract topics. Our findings suggest that review platforms and firms should be cautious about the unintended negative consequences of review solicitation on consumers’ review generation.

Keywords: review solicitation program, online reviews, two-stage difference-in-differences, spillover effect, structural topic model

Suggested Citation

Gao, Baojun and Wang, Jing and Ding, Xiaojie and Guo, Yue, The Pitfalls of Review Solicitation: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on TripAdvisor (October 31, 2023). Management Science (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4012300 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4012300

Baojun Gao

Wuhan University ( email )

Wuhan
China

Jing Wang (Contact Author)

Hong Kong University of Science & Technology ( email )

Lee Shau Kee Business Building
Clearwater Bay
Kowloon
Hong Kong

HOME PAGE: http://www.bm.ust.hk/isom/faculty-and-staff/directory/jwang

Xiaojie Ding

Wuhan Textile University ( email )

Wuhan, 430073
China

Yue Guo

Southern University of Science and Technology ( email )

1088 Xueyuan Road
Shenzhen, 518055
China

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