The Destiny of Movies’ Box Office Performance in China: An Expectation–Evaluation Model

Abstract

This article constructs an expectation-evaluation-performance model to investigate the effect of word-of-mouth on movie box office performance in China. The findings indicate that online rating score positively affects the total box office revenue through influencing the resilience of its life cycle. Specifically, 1 unit increase of the rating score would make the decay index 73.5% higher on average, positively contributing to relevant revenue increase from the opening base. We also find that the impacts of expectation and rating vary among different genres, with larger influence among sci-fi, action, or comedy movies.

Keywords:

• Box office performance
• China
• online rating
• audience expectation
• decay index

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.