When cuisine becomes less haute: The impact of expert ratings on consumers' legitimacy judgments

Abstract What happens when expert ratings downgrade an organization? How does this downgrading influence the consumers legitimacy's judgments? To answer this issue, we study the ‘Relais Bernard Loiseau’ that was downgraded from a three-star to a two-star restaurant by the widely recognized expert, the Michelin Guide . Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the 665 online reviews on the TripAdvisor website from 2004 to June 2017, our findings reveal a null effect on the rating (quantitative component of the evaluation) and a non-linear influence on their online comments (qualitative component). Our findings thus underline the great role of negative emotions in their judgment process, as the emergence of three positions towards the Michelin Guide that evolve: disapproval, approval and impartial. Those findings contribute to nourish the nascent bridge between neoinstitutional theory and consumer-behavior field.