Social Networks and Restaurant Ratings

Abstract

When choosing among restaurants, consumers either look to their peers or to anonymous reviews on the Internet. In this study, we examine the impact of peer versus anonymous social networks on restaurant ratings and revisitation intent. We find that peer networks are substantially more effective in driving consumers' preferences for restaurants, even after controlling for the endogeneity of peer ratings, and that negative reviews have a greater impact on preferences than do positive reviews. Our results suggest a more general finding, namely, that peer networks may be more effective than anonymous networks for many important, complex choices. [EconLit citations: D12, L11, M31, Q13]. C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Communication in times of crisis: Information flow among Chinese hog producers during the African swine fever outbreak

“…The approach of listing the names of Top Three relationships is commonly used in the social network literature when measuring network links because by restricting the number of names, the respondent is guided to name their strongest network members (Conley & Christopher, 2001;Matuschke & Qaim, 2009). The 4-point relationship Likert scale has been used in the literature by Marsden and Campbell (1984), Tiwari andRichards (2016), andWang et al (2019). See Appendix A for the corresponding question (Q8).…”