Why Is the Grass Always Greener on the Other Side? Tourist Bias in Online Restaurant Ratings

An important assumption underlying online ratings’ helpfulness is that rating valence can serve as a good proxy for the quality of a product or service. However, consumers with different backgrounds may have different quality perceptions of the same product or service. As one of the most common types of reviews, restaurant reviews can come from two very different groups of customers: locals and tourists. Merely showing the average rating of a restaurant by pooling all ratings may not be helpful for consumers who wish to determine whether a given restaurant is a good match for them. We find that traveler consumers are much more likely than local consumers to provide higher restaurant ratings, and they tend to attach more pictures, write shorter reviews, and use fewer cognitive words. Individuals’ changes in focus and changes in evaluation processes induce such a tourist bias in ratings. Meanwhile, travel destination, restaurant cuisine authenticity, and consumers’ consumption pattern changes are not responsible for the bias. Our study demonstrates the necessity of differentiating travelers’ and locals’ ratings/reviews and identifies possible reasons behind the tourist bias, which can help retailers, consumers, and platforms better understand, utilize, and manage digital word-of-mouth in practice.