Post-Consumption Susceptibility of Online Reviewers to Random Weather-Related Events

Abstract

We investigate if unpleasant weather – a prominent aspect of a consumer’s physical environment – influences online review provision and content. We propose that bad weather reduces rating scores for past consumption experiences, likely due to reduced positive affect. Furthermore, we expect that bad weather increases the propensity to share opinion due to reduced opportunity costs. To test these hypotheses, we constructed a unique dataset that combines 12 years of rich hotel booking and review data with weather condition information for both the location of a consumer’s residence and the hotel visited. Our analyses provide support for our hypotheses. We found that rain at a consumer’s residential address on the day of review provision reduced rating scores by 0.1 points – 59% of the difference in average rating scores between 4- and 5-star hotels in our data. In addition, reviewing propensity is about 7% higher on rainy days. Our analyses of various automated-sentiment measures for around 300,000 review texts show a significant reduction in reviewer positivity, happiness, and arousal on rainy days. Overall, this study suggests that in real-life scenarios, both the provision and content of consumer product opinions are malleable and can be influenced by events unrelated to consumption, even days afterwards.

Keywords: online reviews, weather, mood, user generated content, context effect