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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings:

Direct Evidence from TripAdvisor
Article in Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research April 2015
DOI: 10.1080/10941665.2015.1029954

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings: Direct

Evidence from TripAdvisor
Markus Schuckert1* , Xianwei Liu2 and Rob Law1
1

School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science
Museum Road, TST-East, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
2
School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street, Harbin, 150001,
Peoples Republic of China

Online ratings and online reputation management are becoming increasingly popular and
important. With this increasing importance, attempts to manipulate online reviews
through fake reviews have become more prevalent. Suspicious online reviews (ratings)
exist on many e-commerce platforms, but these reviews have rarely been observed and
reported as manipulation in academic studies using different test methods. In our research,
we examine empirical evidence of suspicious online ratings based on 41,572 ratings on TripAdvisor. Applying quantitative analytics, we find three important results: (1) the gap
between overall rating and individual ratings does exist and is significant, especially
among the lower class hotels; (2) the proportion of suspicious ratings is about 20% at a
standard of 0.5; and (3) reviewers who tend to post excellent ratings are less likely to generate big gaps when posting ratings. We offer specific managerial implications for hotel
managers on online reputation management and selected suggestions for future research
based on the empirical findings.
Key words: suspicious ratings, social media, reputation management, TripAdvisor

Introduction
With the increasing popularity of e-commerce
platforms and online social media activities,
every industry is now involved in the online
sale of products and/or services and the collection of feedback on them. The hospitality and

*Email: markus.schuckert@polyu.edu.hk
2015 Asia Pacic Tourism Association

tourism industry is no exception. Today, all

categories of hotels employ online travel
agents (OTAs) or booking platforms to diversify their sales channels and reach out to
more potential customers. The volume of
online sales is increasing steadily across all
sectors; especially for airlines and hotels,

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Markus Schuckert et al.

online sales have become the biggest part of

their revenue (Buhalis & Law, 2008).
After returning home from their travels, customers want to give feedback online themselves or are asked to do so by the hotel, the
OTA, or the booking platform. Such online
reviews and ratings given in them have
become increasingly important for the companies and employees involved. From the perspective of potential customers, these reviews
are considered to be authentic, helpful, and
influential (Li & Hitt, 2008). From the perspective of the company and its employees,
online reviews are a fast, instant, and easy
accessible customer feedback and have
become word of mouth on, and the carrier
of, a companys reputation in the digital age
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Thus, online
reviews play a critical role in the online sales
of the hospitality and tourism industry, which
mainly offers services and focuses on customer
satisfaction.
The reviews on e-commerce platforms profit
both travel agencies and travelers. On the one
hand, e-commerce makes it easier for customers to purchase tourism products or services
on the basis of recommendations and
electronic word of mouth; on the other hand,
customers online buying can significantly
increase travel revenue (Shaw, Bailey, &
Williams, 2011; Zhang & Mao, 2012; Zhu
& Zhang, 2010). The online platforms generate feedback through numerous online
reviews and ratings, upon which potential
online customers base their purchase decisions.
It has been found that buyers always follow
and prefer the high-rated hotels or restaurants
(Ye, Law, Gu, & Chen, 2011). Potential customers want to find the right place and be sure
about it, and this is the reason why they
spend so much time reading online reviews to
support their decision-making (Zhu &
Zhang, 2010). Customers like to search for

objective, true, or authentic opinions, and

they prefer reviews, which are mostly delivered
through large feedback platforms and consumer-centric sites, because of their assumed
independence from official or corporate
content (Forman, Ghose, & Wiesenfeld, 2008).
The proliferation of e-commerce and the
increasing number of product (service)
reviews generated by users have changed the
lifestyle of individuals. Previously, purchase
decisions were based on offline or online
advertisements and other product information
provided by sellers. However, nowadays, consumers and businesses increasingly trust and
rely on online reviews in their search for information to make purchase decisions if the
ratings are truly from other customers (Mauri
& Minazzi, 2013; Yacouel & Fleischer, 2012).
But are online reviews (ratings) reliable
enough for making choices? What happens if
consumers and/or companies abuse online
ratings and feedback platforms to manipulate
ratings or submit false ratings for various
reasons? Studies have examined the reliability,
credibility, and helpfulness of online reviews
from the online readers angle (Bissell, 2012;
Mkono, 2012; Xiang & Gretzel, 2010; Yoo
& Gretzel, 2010). Up to now, how to determine or detect suspicious online reviews (for
instance, fake, manipulated, or irresponsible
reviews) remains a challenging question (Hu,
Bose, Koh, & Liu, 2012). Although every ecommerce platform has many rules to ensure
the authenticity of every review posted by customers, review manipulation is not a hypothetical phenomenon (Hu et al., 2012).
In our research, we suggest an objective
method for ascertaining whether an online
review posted on a particular e-commerce platform (TripAdvisor) is unauthentic or suspicious, which is very important for managers
who have their hotels or restaurants on this
influential platform (Lee, Law, & Murphy,

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

2011). Although this method is a shortcut and
in practice has limited universal generalizability
to other e-commerce platforms due to differences in web design, we obtain some valuable
and unexpected findings based on the biggest
and most influential OTA. Through the
method and related findings based on a specific
review platform, we may be able to generalize
the use of this method to other OTAs.
In this paper, we set off to discover the presence of suspicious reviews (ratings), to identify
the proportion of these reviews, and to explore
who tends to post this kind of review. More
specifically, we address the following research
questions:
(1) Are some online ratings self-contradictory
due to lying or perfunctoriness?
(2) If contradictory online ratings do exist,
how large is the proportion of such
reviews and how can the most suspicious
ratings be identified?
We begin by providing insights into the current
state and limitations of the recent literature.
Then, we describe our research design and
give information about the data sampling and
the data collection process. The results of our
study are then presented and the findings discussed. In the final part of the paper, we
discuss the implications of these findings for
users, industry, and researchers as well as
future research opportunities. The paper concludes with a critical view of the limitations
of this study.

Background
Due to the experiential nature of tourism products and services, online reviews are more
important in the hospitality industry since

many potential trip planners often rely on

this source of information when making
decisions (Litvin, Goldsmith, & Pan, 2008;
Yoo & Gretzel, 2011). Thus the websites that
provide reviews are becoming hubs for potential travelers (Cox, Burgess, Sellitto, & Buultjens, 2009; Liu, Schuckert, & Law, 2014;
Schuckert, Liu, & Law, 2014). As consumers
are increasingly depending on information
released through social online channels,
especially online reviews (ratings), to make
product or service purchase decisions, the
quality and truthfulness of the information
available to them are important. Given the
important role of reviews in travel information
searches and decision-making (Yoo & Gretzel,
2008), there is a definite need to judge the
reliability of online reviews. Studies have
revealed that online reviews are not that
reliable nor did they offer methods and procedures to solve this issue. Mack, Blose, and
Pan (2008) noted that the information quality
and the expertise of these sources vary tremendously. Racherla, Connolly, and Christodoulidou (2013) found that the correlation between
overall review rating and ratings on individual
attributes is very low, suggesting that the
overall numerical ratings typically used in
review systems may not be the ideal indicators
of customers perceived service quality and satisfaction. Furthermore, Hu et al. (2012) discovered that around 10.3% of products are
subject to online review manipulation.
This evidence suggests the need to take a
closer look at online reviews (ratings) in
general and in particular at those that seem
to be suspicious. The most concerning aspect
of suspicious or poor-quality reviews is
manipulation, defined by Hu et al. (2012) as
the consistent monitoring of online reviews
and the posting, when needed, of non-authentic customer online reviews by vendors, publishers, writers, or any third party with the goal

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Markus Schuckert et al.

of boosting sales of their products. Figure 1

shows an example of manipulated reviews in
which we noticed the suspicious behavior of
a customer who frequently posted positive
reviews; this user had visited the website
every few days to post reviews with different
textual comments giving very high ratings for
the same product.
Although every e-commerce platform has a
system and procedure to ensure the authenticity
of every review posted by customers, review
manipulation is not a hypothetical phenomenon
(Hu et al., 2012). It is known to exist widely on
popular websites related to e-commerce, travel,
music, and so on: For example, Amazons Canadian website has revealed a sizable proportion
of fake reviews of some books which are
posted by the publishers and authors of the
books and their friends or relatives to increase
online sales (Gurun & Butler, 2012). Review
manipulation is not just prevalent among
online book sellers. The music industry is
known to hire professional marketers to surf
various online chat rooms and fan sites and
post positive comments about new albums in
order to promote sales (Mayzlin, 2006; White,
1999). It also exists in the hospitality industry
(e.g. hotels and restaurants). Positive reviews
and ratings can be posted by an owner and
his/her friends in order to gain a high rating,
attract potential buyers, and boost sales, while
negative reviews (ratings) are used to defame
competitors (Hu et al., 2012).
Consumers may make wrong purchase
decisions based on manipulated online
reviews (ratings). However, to date, few
studies have investigated and reported the presence of manipulated reviews. To the best of our
knowledge, there are only three recent research
papers that have focused on proving the existence of online review manipulation (Hu, Bose,
Gao, & Liu, 2011; Hu et al., 2012; Hu, Liu, &
Sambamurthy, 2011). However, although

current works have offered ways to identify

products or services whose reviews are
manipulated, the validity of their methods
cannot be guaranteed. For example, detecting
fake reviews by the writing style (sentiments
and readability) assumes that the writing
styles of manipulators will be different from
those of genuine consumers, and detecting
them by the fluctuations in mean consumer
ratings over time involves a complex computational process. However, as is known, if a
method is based on assumptions or involves a
complex computational process, the results
will be further away from the facts.
Here, we use a direct approach (without a
complex counting process or an assumption)
to prove the existence of suspicious online
ratings. Our research is also the first attempt
to conduct a quantitative study of suspicious
online reviews in the hotel industry. The three
related studies mentioned above emphasized
the manipulation of positive ratings that can
increase the online sales of the sellers rather
than the negative ratings (vicious competition
within the industry). Furthermore, suspicious
online ratings include not only manipulation
which is a purposive behavior but also purposeless behavior; perfunctory ratings may also
widely exist. In our research, we do not want
to draw a distinction between different types
of suspicious ratings since any subjective judgment is meaningless. Our purpose is to provide
direct evidence of suspicious online ratings and
the proportion of these ratings as well as the
rating behavior in the hotel industry.

Methodology
Data and Variables
TripAdvisor allows reviewers to give two kinds
of ratings at one time: an overall rating and

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

Figure 1

Example of Manipulated Reviews.

Source: Hu et al. (2012, p. 675).

specific ratings. Interestingly, the overall rating

is not computed by the average of the specific
ratings: they are independent. This design of
TripAdvisor is quite different from many
other e-commerce platforms such as Ctrip,
Agoda, and eLong (these platforms only
allow customers to give specific ratings: the
overall rating is computed from the specific
ratings), and this makes it possible for us to
check whether some reviewers are lying using
quantitative analysis. However, it is not only
TripAdvisor that allows customers to give
two kinds of ratings: FlipKey.com also has
the same design. Thus, our method can be

Figure 2

applied on platforms with the same web

design.
Figure 2 below shows the rating system for
TripAdvisor members to post online reviews
and ratings: members can give an overall
rating for a property; also, they have the
option to give specific ratings for service,
value, sleep quality, cleanliness, location,
and rooms (see Figure 3). A crawler was
developed to retrieve both kinds of ratings
from TripAdvisor (Ye, Law, & Gu, 2009),
and focus on every star-rated hotel in Hong
Kong listed on TripAdvisor. We also
acquired web pages of each reviewers infor-

Overall Rating.
Source: TripAdvisor.

Markus Schuckert et al.

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Figure 3

Specific Ratings.
Source: TripAdvisor.

mation (the distribution of every reviewers

ratings). In addition, we developed another
Java-based program to parse HTML and
XML web pages into our database. Data collection was conducted in August 2013, and
the crawler was used to retrieve all available
ratings of TripAdvisor-listed and star-rated
hotels (185 hotels in total, including 18
five-star hotels, 80 four-star hotels, 75
three-star hotels, 11 two-star hotels, and 1
one-star hotel) in Hong Kong. The complete
rating data were collected from each hotel
since the moment the hotel joined TripAdvisor. Records lacking information or repeating
records were deleted, resulting in a research
sample total of 41,572 valid ratings.

Table 1
Variable
Overall
Average
Gap
ABS(Gap)
Excellent rate
Very good rate
Average rate
Poor rate
Terrible rate
Hotel class

Table 1 presents the variables used in the following analysis. Customers can post two kinds
of ratings at one time: overall rating and specific
ratings. We first average the specific ratings of
every post to compute the variable Average,
and then calculate the difference (gap)
between Overall and Average. The rating
distribution of every customer is also calculated,
for instance, if a customer posted 5 ratings
including 1 terrible rating, 2 poor rating, 2
excellent rating, then the terrible rate will be
20%, poor rate 40%, excellent rate 40%.

Suspicious Examples and Research Design

We used the gap between the overall rating and
the average rating as the index to measure
whether a review or a rating is suspicious
(fake or perfunctory). Below are two examples
of suspicious ratings to illustrate our research
design. As can be seen, the overall rating of
the review in Figure 4 is 5, but the specific
ratings diverge significantly from this score
(Value: 1, Location: 3, Sleep: 1, Rooms: 1,

Variables Used for Analysis

Description

The customers overall rating of a property

Average (value, location, sleep, rooms, cleanliness, service)
Gap = OverallAverage
The absolute value of Gap
The number of excellent ratings of a reviewer/the total number of his/her ratings
The number of very good ratings of a reviewer/the total number of his/her ratings
The number of average ratings of a reviewer/the total number of his/her ratings
The number of poor ratings of a reviewer/the total number of his/her ratings
The number of terrible ratings of a reviewer/the total number of his/her ratings
Class according to TripAdvisor (from one star to five star)

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

Figure 4

Suspicious Ratings for Hotel A.

Source: TripAdvisor.

Cleanliness: 1, Service: 1; Average: 1.33), the

Gap being 3.67; the example given in Figure 5
is similar. If we check the content of these two
reviews, we find that the specific ratings rather
than the overall rating in Figure 4 are more
likely to be the reviewers real evaluation,
while in Figure 5, the overall rating seems to
be the true evaluation of the reviewer rather
than the specific ratings. The self-contradiction
between overall ratings and specific ratings
stimulated us to explore whether the given
examples are individual cases or exist extensively and what causes this phenomenon.
In order to explore the difference between
overall ratings and average ratings as well as
the specific ratings, we ran a paired sample
test and a regression analysis, and we further
checked the suspicious review rate on the
basis of different standards.
Furthermore, in order to explore what kind
of reviewers (hotels) tend to post (get) selfcontradictory ratings, we ran a correlation

analysis between the gap and the distribution

of reviews (Excellent, Very good, Average,
Poor, Terrible) of each reviewer as well as
hotel class.

Results and Discussion

Descriptive Statistics
The average value of overall rating among
all 41,572 ratings was around 4.2, which
suggests that travelers are very satisfied with
their experience in Hong Kong hotels in
general. The absolute value of the gap ranged
from 0 to 4, the average value being 0.336.
Reviewers can give an overall rating from 1 to
5: According to the descriptive statistics, most
reviewers (76.4%) tend to give 5 and 4
ratings, suggesting that most travelers feel
satisfied with the hotels or restaurants they
have experienced. However, 15.5% of the tra-

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Markus Schuckert et al.

Figure 5

Suspicious Ratings for Hotel B.

Source: TripAdvisor.

velers in our sample thought that their experience was just so-so, and only 8.1% regarded
their satisfaction level as poor or terrible
(Table 2).

Gap Detection and Evaluation

We first ran a regression analysis to examine
the explanation degree of specific ratings on
overall rating since if the two kinds of ratings
are consistent, the adjusted R2 should be near
100%. Table 3 shows the regression results.
The adjusted R2 is 74.5%, which has quite a
big difference from 100% (Racherla et al.,
2013); thus, the gap does exist. The gap

between overall rating and specific ratings indicates the evaluation difference of hotel
guests. In addition, we found that the most
important specific rating is Service (the coefficient is 0.265), followed by Rooms, and that
the least important specific rating is Location.
So the hotel industry should pay more attention to service and rooms since the guests
care about these more. Service is the key
factor in the hospitality industry; guests
usually put more weight on the service
quality of a hotel. Room space is part of the
hardware of a hotel and is the most important
attribute of accommodation.
We then made a comparison between the
overall rating and the average ratings to

Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

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Table 2

Overall
Average
ABS (Gap)
Excellent rate
Very Good rate
Average rate
Poor rate
Terrible rate

Descriptive Statistics

Min

Max

Mean

S.D.

41,572
41,572
41,572
41,572
41,572
41,572
41,572
41,572

1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0

5
5
4
1
1
1
1
1

4.155
4.194
0.336
0.400
0.364
0.155
0.051
0.030

0.894
0.730
0.320
0.233
0.194
0.132
0.078
0.069

Table 3

Regression Analysis
Unstandardized coefficients

Model
Constant
Value
Location
Sleep quality
Rooms
Cleanliness
Service
F (p-value)
Adjusted R2
N
Dependent variable

Beta

S.E.

Sig.

0.064***
0.175***
0.095***
0.116***
0.253***
0.109***
0.265***
0.000
74.5%

0.017
0.004
0.003
0.004
0.004
0.005
0.004

0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000

29,397
Overall

**Significant at the 0.05 level.

***Significant at the 0.01 level.

confirm this gap. Table 4 shows that overall

ratings and average ratings are significantly
highly correlated, the coefficient reaching
0.857, but they also have significant difference at the 0.000 level, which indicates that
the overall ratings are different from the

average ratings. We then set different levels

of gap standard and count the ratings
which exceed the gap standard. As can be
seen in Table 5, there are 13,011 ratings
whose gap exceeds 0.5 (including 0.5),
accounting for more than 31% of the

10 Markus Schuckert et al.

Table 4
Variable

Correlation (sig.)

T (sig.)

Overall
Average

0.857 (0.000)

16.927 (0.000)

Table 5
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Paired Samples Correlation and Test

ABS (Gap) standard

N
%

Gap Standards and the Corresponding Suspicious Rates

0.5

>0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

13,011
31.30

8,272
19.90

2,128
5.12

329
0.79

92
0.22

sample; when we use a loose value at 0.5 (not

including 0.5), almost 20% of the ratings are
over this gap; the corresponding figures for
the gap standards of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 is
5.12%, 0.79%, and 0.22%, respectively.

Figure 6

Figure 6 shows the 41,572 points: each point

represents a gap between a reviews overall
rating and the average of its specific ratings
(Value, Location, Sleep, Rooms, Cleanliness,
and Service). We can see that most of the gaps

Scatter Diagram.

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

are in the interval [1.0, 1.0]. Conservatively, if
we define the value as over 0.5, then we find that
about 20% of reviews are suspicious: this is a
large and considerable proportion. Numerous
online ratings are generated every day by customers who have experienced hotels; through our
examination of the historical online ratings of
Hong Kong hotels listed on TripAdvisor, we
found a sizable proportion of suspicious
ratings. This is an alarm bell of this e-age since
travelers all over the world rely heavily on
online ratings to make purchase decisions.
Wrong information or unrealistic ranking of
hotels can mislead consumers and result in
decision failures. The suspicious ratings
defined by this study can be regarded as lowquality online reviews which cannot offer
useful information to readers.

Rating Behavior
In order to further explore who tends to post
suspicious ratings, we ran a correlation analysis, the results of which are shown in Table 6.
Except for the significantly negative relationship between Excellent rating and ABS (Gap),
the other variables (Very good, Average,
Poor, and Terrible ratings) are all positively
Table 6

ABS (Gap)
Class
Excellent
Very good
Average
Poor
Terrible

11

related with ABS (Gap), which indicates that

reviewers who tend to give excellent ratings
are less likely to create big gaps and reviewers
who dislike giving excellent ratings are more
likely to generate big gaps. In other words,
reviewers who give high appraisals and indicate high satisfaction give their ratings carefully and from the heart. Reviewers who give
relatively fewer excellent ratings and prefer to
give scores of 14 may not think carefully
about the ratings they give, rather just
posting them randomly without consideration
and objectivity. For example, reviewers who
give more of poor or terrible ratings may just
want to take revenge and do not care about
the reality, and those who like to give average
or very good ratings may regard it as a
routine. So reviewers who usually prefer to
give fewer excellent ratings are more likely to
be lying; generally, those who prefer to give
excellent ratings are telling the truth from the
heart. Another possibility is that reviewers
who tend to give excellent ratings include
more manipulators whose job is to constantly
post positive reviews for many hotels. These
manipulators are required to post both
overall ratings and specific ratings of 5 by
hotel managers who need high online ratings.
As is known, a high online rating represents

Correlation Analysis

ABS (Gap)

Class

Excellent

Very good

Average

Poor

Terrible

1.000
0.082**
0.132**
0.035**
0.082**
0.095**
0.080**

1.000
0.133**
0.088**
0.090**
0.022**
0.003

1.000
0.695**
0.539**
0.251**
0.105**

1.000
0.029**
0.163**
0.226**

1.000
0.039**
0.059**

1.000
0.094**

1.000

**Significant at the 0.01 level.

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12 Markus Schuckert et al.

high online reputation and can attract more
online buyers, which may be transferred into
online sales. Customer ratings can decide the
ranking of a hotel on TripAdvisor. The top
ranking hotels are always shown in the top
position and on the first page of a website,
thus naturally gaining priority in terms of
being considered by potential online buyers.
Thus, online rating is a kind of wealth or
competitiveness for a hotel. Given this situation, hotel managers are encouraged to hire
professional reviewers to generate positive
reviews (ratings) for them.
The relationship between hotel class and
ABS (Gap) is also explored; as the second
row shows, the ratings from higher class
hotels are associated with lower gaps (the coefficient is significantly negative), indicating that
the problem of suspicious online ratings is
more serious among the lower class hotels. In
addition, as the second column shows, higher
class hotels can get more excellent ratings
and less other ratings such as very good,
average, poor, and terrible ratings, suggesting
the high class hotels listed on TripAdvisor are
of high quality and get guests approval.
In our opinion, suspicious online ratings can
be generated in two ways: with purpose
(manipulation, also called fake reviews) and
without purpose (perfunctory rating behavior).
No matter which way they are created, suspicious ratings are unhelpful to online buyers
since readers cannot get actual information
on the evaluation of a hotel experience.

Conclusion
Through analyzing overall ratings and specific
ratings from TripAdvisor, we find that there is
a significant difference between the two kinds
of ratings. The gap between the two kinds of
ratings exists widely and is confirmed by our

empirical study; to be more specific, if we set

the gap standard as 0.5, the proportion of
suspicious online ratings is 20%. Furthermore,
reviewers who tend to give more excellent
ratings are less likely to generate big gaps
when posting ratings. In other words, they
give their high evaluations more carefully and
sincerely, or, more likely, they are manipulators hired to post positive ratings. Furthermore, the issue of suspicious online ratings is
more serious among the lower class hotels.
Our research has many practical applications. First, we suggest that TripAdvisor
should offer an automatic warning function
when a reviewer posts a rating with a gap of
over 0.5 (or some other value) since he/she
may have made a mistake or may not be
taking the rating seriously. Since self-contradictory ratings may confuse readers and
cause unnecessary waste of time, the existence
of this kind of ratings makes no sense.
Since e-commerce platforms are similar, our
findings from TripAdvisor should remind
other e-commerce platforms about the
problem of fake or low-quality reviews. In
addition, by checking the proportion of suspicious ratings of every hotel (restaurant) listed
on TripAdvisor, it is possible to determine
whether there has been manipulation.
Second, this study offers a timely alert for
online buyers who seriously depend on online
reviews when making purchase decisions. We
suggest that readers pay more attention to the
rating gap when searching for useful information to help them make decisions because
some reviews may be fake and therefore are
not based on true facts. According to our findings, perhaps 20% of reviews are not posted
carefully.
Our research also has limitations. First, the
method employed in this research to ascertain
suspicious reviews cannot be applied on most
e-commerce platforms due to differences in

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Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings

web design, so future research should do more
in this field. Second, although we have computed the proportion of suspicious ratings on
the basis of different gap standards, we
cannot confirm which standard is the reality:
In other words, how big the gap should be
before we can regard a review as a lowquality review is still unknown. Third, we did
not include the personal characteristics of
reviewers in our analysis, even though individual attributes can significantly affect online behavior. Gender, age, and other personal
information are not part of our dataset
because this information is private and not disclosed by TripAdvisor. Future studies might
usefully consider these factors by using the
dataset from other OTA platforms when
exploring reviewer behavior. Fourth, TripAdvisor operates in 34 countries worldwide and
has more than 260 million monthly visitors
as well as over 125 million reviews; thus the
reviewer nationalities in our dataset range
extensively. Hence it is not manageable and
appropriate to geographically divide all the
nationalities into two or more groups to
analyze the difference among reviewers from
different countries. Lastly, this is also a disadvantage of using big samples collected from
websites rather than using questionnaires
which can be well controlled.

Funding
The work described in this paper was supported
by a grant funded by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University: (A-PM08).

ORCID
Markus Schuckert
0003-1912-8672

http://orcid.org/0000-

13

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