![]() ![]() "I hope regulators will start seeing all these pieces of digital data as useful in helping them do a better job." They found that a restaurant was between 0.4 and 0.7 percentage points less likely to be sold out on OpenTable after a poor review, constituting a 1.8 to 3.2 percent reduction in sold-out probability. The professors’ machine learning model helped them identify the most negative hygiene reviews in order to compare the probability that the restaurant would be sold out in the two weeks before and after the submission of such reviews. Not surprisingly, customers weren’t in a hurry to visit such businesses. “The semantic connection gives us some reassurance that consumers reading those reviews could actually infer hygiene information,” they write. They found that food handling violations are predicted by words like “sick” and “nauseous,” while the presence of pests is predicted by words like “cockroaches” and “filthy.” As such, the professors devised an algorithm to identify how review text on Yelp is associated with regulatory inspections. Yelp is a mainstream, user-friendly way to aggregate this information. Regulatory health inspections are nothing new: Most cities maintain grading programs to evaluate restaurants’ hygiene practices, and that information is publicly available to savvy diners. Restaurants should thus take that effect into account when deciding whether to clean up, and we find some evidence confirming this as well,” Farronato says. “The information contained in online reviews helps consumers choose cleaner restaurants, which is a pretty robust finding. Consumers can play an influential role when it comes to identifying vermin and other cleanliness issues. After all, Farronato says, monitoring hygiene isn’t merely in the hands of regulators. As the COVID-19 pandemic eases but labor shortages persist, these sites offer another way for consumers to navigate a bumpy return to normalcy, particularly in the service industry.Ĭonsumer Reviews and Regulation: Evidence from NYC Restaurants, a recent working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that restaurant review websites not only provide a useful guide for consumers, but could help influence the restaurant business and its regulators. Sites like Tripadvisor for travel and Glassdoor for employment publish millions of reviews that hold businesses accountable and boost revenue and bookings for favorite spots. Review websites that put some control in the hands of the consumer are growing in popularity, and not just for dining. ![]() Lastly, they found suggestive evidence that restaurants might actually take these influential reviews into account when determining hygiene compliance.Second, these reviews affect consumer demand, as restaurants are less likely to book up during the weeks following a review that notes poor hygiene.First, online reviews are more revealing when it comes to issues that consumers directly experience-the presence of pests and food-handling practices-than behind-the-scenes dimensions, such as workers’ hygiene.Their work has three major takeaways (no pun intended): Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Chiara Farronato and Georgios Zervas, an associate professor at Boston University, used machine learning to pull out so-called hygiene signals in reviews of New York City restaurants. "The information contained in online reviews helps consumers choose cleaner restaurants, which is a pretty robust finding." Restaurants, in turn, often respond by cleaning up their act, according to an analysis of Yelp reviews, OpenTable reservations, and data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Yelp, the website where consumers share their service experiences, often amplifies pest problems and other hygiene issues at restaurants, causing consumers to avoid those with bad ratings. In fact, customers might be more influential than ever, according to a study of online restaurant reviews. There’s a saying in hospitality: The customer is always right. ![]()
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