Paccar Hall, Room 394
Seminar Speaker: Apostolos Filippas
Affiliation: New York University
Area: Information Systems Name of Presentation:
Digital Reputation at Risk: Sharing Economy Platforms and New Challenges for Online Reputation System Design Abstract:
We identify three important differentiators of Sharing Economy platforms from typical online marketplaces. We center on the fact that robust reputation systems are critical in this context, but their long-run behavior is not completely understood. Using data from a large online marketplace, we exhibit that feedback scores have risen sharply over time, leading to substantial top-censoring. While some of the increase is explained by more satisfied raters, at least 30-45% is attributable to raters applying lower standards. We show that this “reputation inflation" is the equilibrium outcome of a model in which (a) inferences made by future trading partners determine what constitutes “bad" feedback and (b) giving “bad" feedback is costly to raters. The introduction of a new feedback system confirms our model predictions: raters were candid when feedback was private, but when feedback suddenly became public, reputations began inflating. |