Abstract

This research investigates reviewing experts on online review platforms. The main hypothesis is that greater expertise in generating reviews leads to greater restraint from extreme summary evaluations. The authors argue that greater experience generating reviews facilitates processing and elaboration and enhances the number of attributes implicitly considered in evaluations, which reduces the likelihood of assigning extreme summary ratings. This restraint-of-expertise hypothesis is tested across different review platforms (TripAdvisor, Qunar, and Yelp), shown for both assigned ratings and review text sentiment, and demonstrated both between (experts vs. novices) and within reviewers (expert vs. pre-expert). Two experiments replicate the main effect and provide support for the attribute-based explanation. Field studies demonstrate two major consequences of the restraint-of-expertise effect. (i) Reviewing experts (vs. novices), as a whole, have less impact on the aggregate valence metric, which is known to affect page-rank and consumer consideration. (ii) Experts systematically benefit and harm service providers with their ratings. For service providers that generally provide mediocre (excellent) experiences, reviewing experts assign significantly higher (lower) ratings than novices. This research provides important caveats to the existing marketing practice of service providers incentivizing reviewing experts and provides strategic implications for how platforms should adopt rating scales and aggregate ratings.

中文翻译：

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审查专家的极端限制及其对服务提供商的影响

摘要

本研究调查在线评论平台上的评论专家。主要假设是，产生评论的专业知识越多，对极端摘要评估的约束就越大。作者认为，产生更多评论的经验可以促进处理和阐述，并可以增加评估中隐含考虑的属性的数量，从而降低了分配极端概要评分的可能性。在不同的审阅平台（TripAdvisor，Qunar和Yelp）上测试了这种专业限制假设，针对指定的评分和审阅文本情绪进行了显示，并在（专家与新手之间）和审阅者之间（专家与预科之间）进行了证明。 -专家）。两个实验复制了主要效果，并为基于属性的解释提供了支持。实地研究表明，专家限制的作用有两个主要后果。（i）总体而言，评审专家（相对于新手）对合计价指标的影响较小，众所周知，合计价指标会影响页面排名和消费者考虑因素。（ii）专家对其评级系统性地造福和损害服务提供者。对于通常提供中等（出色）体验的服务提供商，审阅专家给予的评分远高于新手（较低）。这项研究为激励服务提供商审查专家的现有服务提供商的营销实践提供了重要警告，并为平台应如何采用评级量表和综合评级提供了战略意义。对合计价指标的影响较小，已知该合计价会影响页面排名和消费者考虑因素。（ii）专家对其评级系统性地造福和损害服务提供者。对于通常提供中等（出色）体验的服务提供商，审阅专家给予的评分远高于新手（较低）。这项研究为激励服务提供商审查专家的现有服务提供商的营销实践提供了重要警告，并为平台应如何采用评级量表和综合评级提供了战略意义。对合计价指标的影响较小，已知该合计价会影响页面排名和消费者考虑因素。（ii）专家对其评级系统性地造福和损害服务提供者。对于通常提供中等（出色）体验的服务提供商，审阅专家给予的评分远高于新手（较低）。这项研究为激励服务提供商审查专家的现有服务提供商的营销实践提供了重要警告，并为平台应如何采用评级量表和综合评级提供了战略意义。审阅专家的评分远高于新手。这项研究为激励服务提供商审查专家的现有服务提供商的行销实践提供了重要警告，并为平台应采用评级量表和综合评级提供了战略意义。审阅专家的评分远高于新手。这项研究为激励服务提供商审查专家的现有服务提供商的营销实践提供了重要警告，并为平台应如何采用评级量表和综合评级提供了战略意义。