Understanding the impact of prior reviews on subsequent reviews: The role of rating volume, variance and reviewer characteristics

Extant literature has recognized the impact of previously posted ratings on subsequent ratings but reports inconsistent findings. To reconcile the mixed findings in the literature, this study draws on an integrative view of information diagnosticity and social influence theory to investigate the moderating effect of rating context (characterized by volume and variance of prior ratings) and its interaction with subsequent reviewer characteristics on the relationship between the average of prior ratings and a subsequent rating. The empirical analyses, using a dataset of 70,410 restaurant reviews collected from Yelp.com, reveal that both volume and variance of prior ratings exert negative moderating effects and such moderating effects are contingent on subsequent reviewer connectedness and expertise.