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Interesting conclusion made by the authors about why reviews on Airbnb tend to be more positively biased than elsewhere. > Reviews on Airbnb may all appear s
by r_singh 7y ago
Interesting conclusion made by the authors about why reviews on Airbnb tend to be more positively biased than elsewhere.
> Reviews on
Airbnb
may all appear similar on the surface, but they nonetheless hold power as each one increases the amount of unique information available to other users, potentially reducing uncertainty for future hosts and guests. Our study confirms previous research focusing on star ratings: positive ratings and reviews are clearly the norm on
Airbnb
. No doubt, many positive reviews are the result of consumer experiences which frequently
are
genuinely pleasant. Nevetheless users should be mindful that there may be a number of other reasons for the strong positive orientation in so many
Airbnb
reviews: negative aspects of experience may be minimized, or left unmentioned, in reviews, due to factors such as: sociocultural norms of politeness, established trust among host and guest, review and rating reciprocity, lack of anonymity, as well as
Airbnb
’s possible removal of reviews
which violating their guidelines. Therefore, less-than-positive experiences may be concealed in lukewarm reviews where reviewers avoid overt negativity: for instance, in comments such as
“Interesting stay in a nice neighborhood.”
As a result, users should be aware that meaning resides not only in the information that is given, but also in the information that is excluded
- duxup 7y agoHow many reviews would you have to read to get the unique information from each one? I'm not sure people read that many reviews.
- andygcook 7y agoI'd love a service that gleans interesting tidbits from long reviews and surfaces it all in a summary. I recently went to Curaçao and had a great time. The main reason it was a fun trip is because my girlfriend loves reading reviews and found all the pro-tips in them.
- duxup 7y agoAmazon and other places seem fond of word bubble type information.
- mojuba 7y agoThis is exactly how I read reviews on Airbnb and Booking.com. "Great location, friendly staff" and nothing else almost definitely means a very shitty place at a nice location. Speaking of which, despite its horrible UI somehow I find Booking.com to be more reliable than Airbnb in this regard. I think Airbnb's game of mutual reviews (that are not published until both parties agree) eventually proves to be disfunctional and useless. Booking.com gives the clients the freedom to say anything without the fear of retaliation. Of course there will always be very unhappy customers even if the place is amazing, but at least you know you can rely on the averages and specifically the wording of the reviews.
- Gys 7y agoBooking asks for the good parts and the bad parts seperately and then only shows the good parts. You really have to look around for the negative parts. I always do that and it is very helpful.