Combating the Influence of the Heuristic Thinking in Online Star Ratings: Preliminary Evidence

Online reviews, often considered more credible and less biased than marketing information, have become an important aspect of making purchase decisions. Yet, online star ratings can be affected by reviewers’ heuristic evaluations, potentially leading to suboptimal purchase decisions. For example, star ratings may be biased due to the availability heuristic, i.e., users giving disproportionate weight to one—often negative—attribute. As research has demonstrated that even minor modifications of the presentation of options can have a large influence on people’s behavior, we test the effects of prior attribute rating on overall star rating. An experiment (n = 56) conducted in the context of restaurant ratings showed that merely asking people first to rate individual attributes can significantly influence overall ratings. These findings can have important implications, as uncovering the effects specific design parameters of review forms have on people’s evaluation results will allow for reducing unintended biases in review form design.