Research On The Influence Of Criteria Set Adjustment On User’s Rating Behavior In Online Multidimensional Review System

Online word-of-mouth provided by online e-commerce platforms has become the most important source of information for consumers when making purchase decisions.Online ratings have been a core design feature of online review systems due to their intuitive nature compared to text-based reviews.Given that multi-criteria ratings provide richer information about a product’s utility than the traditional single overall rating and help reduce uncertainty for subsequent consumers in matching product quality and preferences,in recent years,an increasing number of online platforms have adopted a combination of overall ratings and multicriteria ratings to guide consumers to provide structured feedback on multiple attributes of a product.However,the criterion set of the review system design will play a certain role in guiding the overall rating of the product,forming a criterion selection bias,and a poorly set criterion set will seriously reduce the utility of the online review system.Meanwhile,based on thesis’ s observation of e-commerce platforms,we found that there are a number of platforms with variability in the set of guidelines set for the same category of goods.Therefore,in this thesis,we take travel e-commerce platforms as an example to explore what impact the adjustment of guideline sets will have on consumer rating behavior.This thesis first constructs a conceptual model through signal transmission theory and expectation confirmation theory,and proposes research questions and hypotheses from the perspectives of rating information and expectation confirmation to explain the effect of criterion set adjustment on users’ rating behaviour.Then,this thesis selects Fliggy and Dianping as the research objects,where Dianping’s hotel rating criterion set is adjusted from the previous room,location and service to location,service,hygiene and facilities in 2017;Fliggy’s criterion set always keeps service,facilities,hygiene and value for money unchanged.This thesis matches data from these two websites for the same set of hotels,controlling for changes in hotel service quality over time through Fliggy.The thesis then explores whether and how criterion set adjustment in a multidimensional rating system affects user satisfaction(as measured by user ratings)using differences-in-differences approach.Finally,the thesis takes into account that hotels are heterogeneous and sets hotel star rating as a moderating variable to investigate its moderating effect on the effect of the criterion set adjustment on overall consumer ratings.The empirical results of this thesis show that there is a decreasing trend and low convergence in the overall user ratings in the criterion set adjusted rating system.Criterion set adjustment has a significant effect on both overall user rating size and rating bias,and this effect is moderated by the hotel star rating.The higher the hotel star rating,the greater the impact of the criterion set adjustment on overall rating size,and the smaller the impact on overall rating deviations.The findings of this thesis provide management implications for the design of online review systems and the development of the hotel industry.Setting a reasonable set of criteria can help consumers eliminate uncertainty and increase their confidence in their purchasing decisions,while helping businesses understand consumers’ true feelings and thus adjust and optimise their products and services to improve their competitiveness.