Consumer motivation in providing high-quality information: building toward a novel design for travel guide websites

ABSTRACT

Given the ever-growing information overload among users of online review websites, understanding the manner in which cognitive costs are reduced has become increasingly important. Despite the emergence of literature that focused on studying consumer motivation to publish high-quality reviews, the effect of direct intervention on this motivation remains relatively unclear. This study targets a unique design based on data from Qunar.com, one of the most popular Chinese travel websites. By developing a conceptual framework and applying survival analysis methods, our results suggest that both the immediate and cumulative effects of expert reviews positively motivate users to post additional eligible reviews; however, their motivation to further improve the quality of their evaluations diminish as they accumulate more expert reviews. Based on the study results, important implications for travel-related websites are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Expert review
• cognitive cost
• website design
• consumer review
• tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the support of research funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71322202, 71671049, 71532004, and 71490722), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0179), and Fok Ying-Tong Education Foundation for Young Teachers in the Higher Education Institutions of China (151082).