Research On The Influence Of Weather On Customer Online Reviews In Restaurant Industry

Online reviews are generated by consumers and provide an important information source for consumers and business.The behavior of consumers online commenting can be influenced by many factors,and those influences will eventually be reflected in the ratings and texts of online reviews.According to Belk's situational theory and theories of the influence of weather factors on people's physiology and psychology,we purpose that weather factors can impact online reviews in the restaurant industry.Based on a unique dataset combining dining and review information,as well as the corresponding weather data,this study investigates how rainy weather affects customers' online restaurant reviews.First,we make a research about the influence of rainy weather on online review ratings(including overall rating and restaurant attribute ratings).We found that the rainy weather at the time of commenting will reduce the overall rating,taste rating,environment rating and service rating of online review.What's more,we found factors that can weaken the impact of weather factors on online review ratings;that is,when the overall rating,taste rating,and environmental rating are higher than the previous average overall rating,taste rating,and environment rating,the negative impact of rainy weather on overall rating,taste eating and environment rating will be weakened.Second,we study the influence of rainy weather on the characteristics of online reviews.We found that the rainy weather at the time of the commenting will reduce the text length of online reviews.We also found factors that can weaken the impact of the weather on the text length of the online reviews;that is,when the overall rating,taste rating,and service rating are lower than previous average overall ratings,taste ratings,and service ratings of the restaurant,the negative impact of rainy weather on the text length of online reviews will be weakened.Moreover,with the help of text analysis software and tools,we found that although the rainy weather on commenting time will reduce the text length and rating of online reviews,it cannot affect the occurrence of positive emotion words,negative emotion words,anxious words,angrywords,sad words and negative words in online reviews.