Reciprocity through ratings: An experimental study of bias in evaluations

Authors

Simon Halliday, Smith CollegeFollow
Jonathan Lafky, Carleton College

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2019

Publication Title

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

Abstract

This paper studies the potential for ratings of seller quality to be influenced by side payments to raters. In a laboratory setting, we find that even modest side payments from sellers to raters have large effects, with the type of rating (favorable or unfavorable) given to a seller determined primarily by how large a monetary transfer the seller makes to the rater. Our results demonstrate that side payments can crowd out a rater’s concern for buyers, even in situations where there is no potential for long-term relationship building.

Keywords

Ratings, Reciprocity, Punishment

Volume

83

DOI

doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2019.101480

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Rights

Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.

Comments

Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.

Recommended Citation

Halliday, Simon and Lafky, Jonathan, "Reciprocity through ratings: An experimental study of bias in evaluations" (2019). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/29