Inflation in Reputation Systems? Newcomers, Veterans, and Socialization Within a Platform Community

Rating inflation can undermine the informational value of online reputation systems, yet platforms often treat it as a uniform problem requiring uniform solutions. Our mixed-method study shows instead that rating behavior evolves as reviewers become socialized within platform communities. We identify three archetypical phases: the Newcomer Phase, the Inflator Phase, and the Veteran Phase. Newcomers who are not yet socialized in the platform community are less likely to inflate their ratings. Inflators exhibit the social norm of direct reviewer reciprocity and inflate their ratings. Veterans, reflecting the social norm of generalized reviewer reciprocity, are less likely to inflate ratings. Rating inflation therefore appears less as a fixed reviewer trait than as a phase in a reviewer’s development. For platform managers, our findings suggest that anti-inflation interventions should be tailored to a reviewer’s stage rather than applied uniformly. Platforms may particularly benefit from cultivating and retaining deeply socialized veteran reviewers whose ratings can provide more informative signals. For consumers, our findings suggest that highly enthusiastic reviewers may not necessarily be the most informative ones. More broadly, platform policies and reputation-system designs should account for how socialization and platform affordances shape reviewer behavior over time.

• 저널Information Systems Research
• 토픽Digital Marketing and Social Media · Sociology and Political Science
• DOI10.1287/isre.2022.0321
• 저자Mareike Möhlmann, John P. Lalor, Yoonseock Son, Nicholas Berente