An Empirical Investigation of Culture’s Influence in Online Service Ratings: From the Perspective of Uncertainty Avoidance

Authors

Dapeng Xu, School of Management, Xiamen University, ChinaFollow
Jiajun Wu, School of Management, Xiamen University, ChinaFollow
Hong Hong, School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, ChinaFollow
Di Xu, School of Management, Xiamen University, ChinaFollow
Rong Li, School of Management, Xiamen University, ChinaFollow

Corresponding Author

Hong Hong

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In order to figure out the influence of consumers’ cultural background on their online review generation behavior, this study aims to investigate how consumers’ uncertainty avoidance values influence their online ratings. Utilizing data collected from a major travel review website, TripAdvisor, we find a negative relationship between uncertainty avoidance degree and online review rating. Consumers’ travel type and hotel star are found to have a moderating effect between consumers’ uncertainty avoidance and their online ratings. Moreover, the negative effect of uncertainty avoidance value on review rating is weaker for consumers on business travel, and this effect also decreases for upscale hotels. The results are further confirmed by a robustness check using another method. From a theoretical perspective, our study enriches existing literature dealing with online reviews. From a practical perspective, our research findings provide helpful insights to hotel practitioners.

Recommended Citation

Xu, Dapeng; Wu, Jiajun; Hong, Hong; Xu, Di; and Li, Rong, "An Empirical Investigation of Culture’s Influence in Online Service Ratings: From the Perspective of Uncertainty Avoidance" (2018). ICEB 2018 Proceedings (Guilin, China). 90.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/iceb2018/90