The disproportion of crowd wisdom: The impact of status seeking on Yelp reviews.
This study shows that while status seeking motivates people to participate in crowdsourcing platforms, it also negatively impacts the bedrock of crowdsourcing-wisdom of crowds. Using Yelp restaurant reviews in 6 cities, we found that motivations of status seeking lead people to review a greater vari...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | article |
| Language: | EN |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doaj.org/article/31002703b25d41b1b9adc1e5abbcc849 |
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| Summary: | This study shows that while status seeking motivates people to participate in crowdsourcing platforms, it also negatively impacts the bedrock of crowdsourcing-wisdom of crowds. Using Yelp restaurant reviews in 6 cities, we found that motivations of status seeking lead people to review a greater variety of restaurants, and achieving status further encourages this variety seeking as well as the targeting of more expensive restaurants for review. The impact of this individual-level tendency is confirmed by our aggregate-level analysis which shows that restaurants with higher price levels, higher uniqueness levels, and a larger percentage of elite reviews tend to obtain enough reviews to generate wisdom of crowds sooner than other restaurants. This leads to a different kind of distortion to crowd wisdom: an over-representation of status-conferring products and an under-representation of products that are not status-worthy. The findings suggest the importance of studying sources of distortion that are endemic to crowdsourcing itself. |
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