The Impact of Fake Reviews on Online Visibility: A Vulnerability Assessment of the Hotel Industry
Authors: Lappas, Theodoros; Sabnis, Gaurav; Valkanas, Georgios
Journal: Information Systems Research (2016)
<jats:p> Extant research has focused on the detection of fake reviews on online review platforms, motivated by the well-documented impact of customer reviews on the users’ purchase decisions. The problem is typically approached from the perspective of protecting the credibility of review platforms, as well as the reputation and revenue of the reviewed firms. However, there is little examination of the vulnerability of individual businesses to fake review attacks. This study focuses on formalizing the visibility of a business to the customer base and on evaluating its vulnerability to fake review attacks. We operationalize visibility as a function of the features that a business can cover and its position in the platform’s review-based ranking. Using data from over 2.3 million reviews of 4,709 hotels from 17 cities, we study how visibility can be impacted by different attack strategies. We find that even limited injections of fake reviews can have a significant effect and explore the factors that contribute to this vulnerable state. Specifically, we find that, in certain markets, 50 fake reviews are sufficient for an attacker to surpass any of its competitors in terms of visibility…