Paid online reviews suddenly trustworthy: study shows surprisingly expected result

Quite a few people leave their opinion on every purchase, every visit to the bakery and every park bench they try out in the form of an online review. A much larger proportion simply find this time-consuming or assume that their own contribution will have little influence. Or do not want to give their own time free of charge to improve an online portal.

A recent study led by lead author Ofer Tchernichovski from Hunter College at the City University of New York shows just how important this second group can be.

The test subjects had to collect coins in an online game and switch back and forth between islands. The problem: there were always several ferries to choose from, but they had different speeds.

As a social component, the creators of the study built in a rating option for the individual ferries. This allowed players to support each other and rate the ferries to help others get from island to island faster.

The results are likely to be in line with the experiences of many readers with an affinity for online shopping: just under a third of participants left any ratings at all and their validity was at least questionable.

Payment encourages more committed ratings

The game was then modified. From now on, coins were also awarded for writing a review. With an astonishing influence on the overall result.

Unsurprisingly, twice as many players now took part in rating the ferries. At the same time, the comments of those who had not previously commented were much more detailed and reflected the behavior of the ferries much more accurately than in the first attempt with unpaid ratings.

Apparently, the virtual payment made participants feel obliged to offer an adequate service in return. It is hoped that online retailers and other platforms will adopt this insight.

However, the result is not entirely surprising. There are numerous studies that show that test subjects are very committed to their work in return for what they perceive as appropriate payment. On the other hand, if the payment is far too high (e.g. when providing tested goods), there is a tendency to deliver a significantly desired result rather than a genuine opinion.