IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v83y2019ics2214804319302459.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reciprocity through ratings: An experimental study of bias in evaluations

Author

Listed:
  • Halliday, Simon D.
  • Lafky, Jonathan

Abstract

This paper studies the potential for ratings of seller quality to be influenced by side payments to raters. In a laboratory setting, we find that even modest side payments from sellers to raters have large effects, with the type of rating (favorable or unfavorable) given to a seller determined primarily by how large a monetary transfer the seller makes to the rater. Our results demonstrate that side payments can crowd out a rater’s concern for buyers, even in situations where there is no potential for long-term relationship building.

Suggested Citation

  • Halliday, Simon D. & Lafky, Jonathan, 2019. "Reciprocity through ratings: An experimental study of bias in evaluations," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:83:y:2019:i:c:s2214804319302459
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2019.101480
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804319302459
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socec.2019.101480?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dina Mayzlin & Yaniv Dover & Judith Chevalier, 2014. "Promotional Reviews: An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2421-2455, August.
    2. Falk, Armin & Fischbacher, Urs, 2006. "A theory of reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 293-315, February.
    3. Nikos Nikiforakis & Helen Mitchell, 2014. "Mixing the carrots with the sticks: third party punishment and reward," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(1), pages 1-23, March.
    4. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    5. Carpenter, Jeffrey P., 2007. "The demand for punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 522-542, April.
    6. Paul Resnick & Christopher Avery & Richard Zeckhauser, 1999. "The Market for Evaluations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 564-584, June.
    7. Anderson, Christopher M. & Putterman, Louis, 2006. "Do non-strategic sanctions obey the law of demand? The demand for punishment in the voluntary contribution mechanism," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 1-24, January.
    8. Chrysanthos Dellarocas, 2006. "Strategic Manipulation of Internet Opinion Forums: Implications for Consumers and Firms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(10), pages 1577-1593, October.
    9. Lafky, Jonathan, 2014. "Why do people rate? Theory and evidence on online ratings," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 554-570.
    10. Barr, Abigail & Serra, Danila, 2010. "Corruption and culture: An experimental analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 862-869, December.
    11. Gary Bolton & Ben Greiner & Axel Ockenfels, 2013. "Engineering Trust: Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(2), pages 265-285, January.
    12. Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Deception Through Telling the Truth?! Experimental Evidence From Individuals and Teams," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 47-60, January.
    13. Klein, T.J. & Lambertz, C. & Spagnalo, G. & Stahl, K.O., 2009. "The actual structure of eBay’s feedback mechanism and early evidence on the effect of recent changes," Other publications TiSEM b4c7374f-b992-445a-b5c6-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    14. Kenju Kamei & Louis Putterman, 2018. "Reputation Transmission Without Benefit To The Reporter: A Behavioral Underpinning Of Markets In Experimental Focus," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 158-172, January.
    15. Klein, T.J. & Lambertz, C. & Spagnolo, G. & Stahl, K.O., 2006. "Last minute feedback," Other publications TiSEM 10afaa8e-ec7f-4269-9535-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    17. Anthony Ziegelmeyer & Katrin Schmelz & Matteo Ploner, 2012. "Hidden costs of control: four repetitions and an extension," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(2), pages 323-340, June.
    18. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    19. Ulrike Malmendier & Klaus M. Schmidt, 2017. "You Owe Me," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 493-526, February.
    20. Abbink, Klaus & Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Gangadharan, Lata & Jain, Tarun, 2014. "Letting the briber go free: An experiment on mitigating harassment bribes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 17-28.
    21. , 2015. "Quality Versus Quantity in Information Transmission: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper 539, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2015.
    22. Rabin, Matthew, 1993. "Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1281-1302, December.
    23. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Third Party Punishment and Social Norms," IEW - Working Papers 106, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    24. Uri Gneezy, 2005. "Deception: The Role of Consequences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 384-394, March.
    25. Yan Chen & F. Maxwell Harper & Joseph Konstan & Sherry Xin Li, 2010. "Social Comparisons and Contributions to Online Communities: A Field Experiment on MovieLens," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1358-1398, September.
    26. Burdin, Gabriel & Halliday, Simon & Landini, Fabio, 2018. "The hidden benefits of abstaining from control," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 1-12.
    27. Alistair Wilson & Jonathan Lafky, 2015. "Quality Versus Quantity in Information Transmission: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper 540, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2015.
    28. Lingfang (Ivy) Li & Erte Xiao, 2014. "Money Talks: Rebate Mechanisms in Reputation System Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(8), pages 2054-2072, August.
    29. Jonathan Lafky & Alistair J. Wilson, 2015. "Quality vs. Quantity in Information Transmission: Theory and Experimental Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 5426, CESifo.
    30. Helen Mitchell & Nikos Nikiforakis, 2014. "Mixing the Carrots with the Sticks: Third Party Punishment and Reward," Post-Print halshs-00811992, HAL.
    31. Loukas Balafoutas & Nikos Nikiforakis & Bettina Rockenbach, 2014. "Direct and indirect punishment among strangers in the field," Natural Field Experiments 00637, The Field Experiments Website.
    32. Xiao, Erte, 2013. "Profit-seeking punishment corrupts norm obedience," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 321-344.
    33. Michael Kosfeld & Armin Falk, 2006. "The Hidden Costs of Control," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1611-1630, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Britta Hoyer & Dirk van Straaten, 2021. "Anonymity and Self-Expression in Online Rating Systems - An Experimental Analysis," Working Papers Dissertations 70, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    2. Johnen, Johannes & Ng, Robin, 2023. "Ratings and Reciprocity," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2023006, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Hoyer, B. & van Straaten, D., 2022. "Anonymity and self-expression in online rating systems—An experimental analysis," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 98(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2013. "Second vs. Third Party Punishment under Costly Monitoringː A New Experimental Method and Evidence," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 6, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    2. Kenju Kamei & Louis Putterman, 2018. "Reputation Transmission Without Benefit To The Reporter: A Behavioral Underpinning Of Markets In Experimental Focus," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 158-172, January.
    3. Leibbrandt, Andreas & López-Pérez, Raúl, 2012. "An exploration of third and second party punishment in ten simple games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(3), pages 753-766.
    4. Fabbri, Marco & Carbonara, Emanuela, 2017. "Social influence on third-party punishment: An experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 204-230.
    5. Lafky, Jonathan & Wilson, Alistair J., 2020. "Experimenting with incentives for information transmission: Quantity versus quality," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 314-331.
    6. Ryvkin, Dmitry & Serra, Danila & Tremewan, James, 2017. "I paid a bribe: An experiment on information sharing and extortionary corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-22.
    7. Jonathan Lafky & Alistair Wilson, 2018. "Quantity Versus Quality: Experimenting with the Margins for Social Information," Working Papers 2018-02, Carleton College, Department of Economics.
    8. Fehr, Dietmar & Sutter, Matthias, 2019. "Gossip and the efficiency of interactions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 448-460.
    9. Dominik Gutt & Jürgen Neumann & Steffen Zimmermann & Dennis Kundisch & Jianqing Chen, 2018. "Design of Review Systems - A Strategic Instrument to shape Online Review Behavior and Economic Outcomes," Working Papers Dissertations 42, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    10. Bierbrauer, Felix & Ockenfels, Axel & Pollak, Andreas & Rückert, Désirée, 2017. "Robust mechanism design and social preferences," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 59-80.
    11. Nathalie Colombier & David Masclet & Daniel Mirza & Claude Montmarquette, 2011. "Global Security Policies against Terrorism and the Free Riding Problem: An Experimental Approach," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 13(5), pages 755-790, October.
    12. Dimant, Eugen, 2015. "On Peer Effects: Behavioral Contagion of (Un)Ethical Behavior and the Role of Social Identity," MPRA Paper 68732, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Robert Stüber, 2020. "The benefit of the doubt: willful ignorance and altruistic punishment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(3), pages 848-872, September.
    14. Gneezy, Uri & Saccardo, Silvia & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2016. "Bribery: Greed versus reciprocity," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2016-203, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    15. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2016. "Second and third party punishment under costly monitoring," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 124-133.
    16. Reuben, Ernesto & Riedl, Arno, 2013. "Enforcement of contribution norms in public good games with heterogeneous populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 122-137.
    17. Boosey, Luke & Goerg, Sebastian, 2020. "The timing of discretionary bonuses – effort, signals, and reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 254-280.
    18. Gary E. Bolton & David J. Kusterer & Johannes Mans, 2019. "Inflated Reputations: Uncertainty, Leniency, and Moral Wiggle Room in Trader Feedback Systems," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5371-5391, November.
    19. Feess, Eberhard & Schildberg-Hörisch, Hannah & Schramm, Markus & Wohlschlegel, Ansgar, 2018. "The impact of fine size and uncertainty on punishment and deterrence: Theory and evidence from the laboratory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 58-73.
    20. Kandul, Serhiy & Lanz, Bruno & Reins, Evert, 2023. "Reciprocity and gift exchange in markets for credence goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 52-69.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ratings; Reciprocity; Punishment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:83:y:2019:i:c:s2214804319302459. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.