Trust and Bias in Peer-to-Peer Ratings: Why Peer-to-Peer Service Ratings are Nearly Always Positive, and How They Can be Fixed
Transactions in the peer-to-peer sharing economy carry high risk and uncertainty. Consumers exchange with non-professional providers with whom they have no past history, and must rely on ratings and reviews for choice selection. However, there is a large positive bias in the ratings, making differentiation difficult, and causing some consumers to lose trust. Despite these concerns, little progress has been made to demonstrate the cause of the bias or how it can be fixed. I address this gap by demonstrating that consumers evaluate peer-peer experiences based on trust. This trust evaluation, in concert with network and social factors, contributes to the bias. Research on service evaluation is often informed by the expectancy disconfirmation process (Oliver, 1980, 2010). Consumers compare a provider’s performance against prior expectations; the resultant satisfaction or dissatisfaction leads to online ratings. I demonstrate that the process works differently for peer-to-peer services; a consumer’s determination of whether a provider met expectations has an effect on ratings beyond the effect of satisfaction (Study 1). When uncertainty and risk are high, a provider demonstrates that they can be trusted by meeting a consumer’s prior expectations (Study 2). Contextual factors in peer-to-peer networks cause consumers to feel that their ratings are more important to peer providers, and that they may need to justify ratings. This elevates trust as an important driver of ratings at the expense of satisfaction, because satisfaction is more subjective and more difficult to justify (Study 3). Consumers may give peer providers positive ratings even if performance is worse than expected. Standards of evaluation are relatively unclear for peer-to-peer services (making it more difficult to identify performance failure), and social norms of gratitude and empathy motivate consumers to forgive peer providers for unreliable service (Studies 4 and 5). Negative ratings for peer providers may result only if consumers believe that a provider caused and controlled a negative outcome, which suggests a lack of integrity (Study 6). I demonstrate that platforms can attenuate the positive bias by making ratings anonymous, by clearly defining service standards, and by increasing perceived controllability by providers for expectations and performance failure.
Trust, Satisfaction, Expectancy Disconfirmation, Online Reviews, Peer-to-Peer, Sharing Economy
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