Asymmetric recommendations: The interacting effects of social ratings' direction and strength on users' ratings

Oded Nov, Ofer Arazy

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In social recommendation systems, users often publicly rate objects such as photos, news articles or consumer products. When they appear in aggregate, these ratings carry social signals such as the direction and strength of the raters' average opinion about the product. Using a controlled experiment we manipulated two central social signals-the direction and strength of social ratings of five popular consumer products-and examined their interacting effects on users' ratings. The results show an asymmetric user behavior, where the direction of perceived social rating has a negative effect on users' ratings if the direction of perceived social rating is negative, but no effect if the direction is positive. The strength of perceived social ratings did not have a significant effect on users' ratings. The findings highlight the potential for cascading adverse effects of small number of negative user ratings on subsequent users' opinions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationRecSys 2015 - Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages249-252
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450336925
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 16 2015
Event9th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, RecSys 2015 - Vienna, Austria
Duration: Sep 16 2015Sep 20 2015

Publication series

NameRecSys 2015 - Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems

Other

Other9th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, RecSys 2015
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVienna
Period9/16/159/20/15

Keywords

  • Anchoring
  • Recommender systems
  • Social influence
  • Social signals
  • Theory-driven design

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Information Systems
  • Software
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Control and Systems Engineering

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