| 吴如海
麦克马斯特大学副教授
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【时间】2015年5月21日（周四）15.30-17.30
【摘要】Consumer ratings provided in online marketplaces not only help potential consumers learn about the quality of sellers’products and services, but also shape the competition among those sellers. Some sellers, taking the advantage of anonymity of contributing consumers, forge consumer reviews to boost their own ratings. This research uses a game theoretical model to explore the incentive mechanism of the manipulation of consumer reviews in a competitive environment. By examining the interaction between price competition and review manipulation, this paper answers the following questions: Who manipulates online consumer reviews, and who does not? How does such manipulation influence the ranking of the perceived quality of the sellers? What factors contribute to the degree of consumer review manipulation? And, how does the propensity of consumers’contribution to reviews affect such a manipulation? Our model shows that although forging consumer reviews can improve their perceived quality, high-quality sellers do not do so because they incur higher marginal costs. Only low-quality sellers fake consumer reviews. However, the manipulation of consumer ratings does not change the rankings of the perceived quality of sellers. This paper also shows how market characteristics, including consumer quality preference, manipulation cost, and marketplace commission fee influence the manipulation of consumer reviews. Interestingly, this paper also finds that when dissatisfied consumers are more likely to voice their options than would satisfied consumers, sellers engage less manipulation of consumer reviews.
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