Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

Does Solicitation Produce More Informative User-Generated Performance Ratings? Evidence from a Field Experiment

• In Event: Field Experiments and Field Studies

Abstract

User-generated ratings are an important form of control on digital platforms, as platform providers use them to evaluate platform users. Typically, ratings consist of both quantitative and qualitative components. However, in practice, user-generated ratings often lack informativeness, as many users provide no ratings or ratings without a qualitative component (i.e., text). We use a large bus booking platform to investigate whether different solicitation types can improve the informativeness of user-generated performance ratings. We randomly assign travel customers of the bus booking platform to three groups: (i) basic solicitation without any incentive, (ii) financial solicitation, and (iii) social norm-based solicitation. We predict that financial solicitation will result in less informative ratings, while social norm-based solicitation will increase informativeness. We find that both financial and social-norm-based solicitation produce more informative ratings due to increasing the informativeness of the qualitative component.

Authors

• Fabian Fritzsche, Ulm University

• Mischa Seiter, Ulm University

• Andreas Steur, Ulm University