The Weekend Effect in Online Reviews

Abstract

This article finds that online reviews submitted during the weekend tend to have lower rating scores than reviews submitted during the week. Analyzing 400 million reviews across 33 e-commerce, hospitality, entertainment, and employer platforms, the authors find that weekend reviews have a 3% lower relative share of 5-star ratings and a 6% higher relative share of 1-, 2-, or 3-star ratings compared with weekday reviews. The pattern emerges even when controlling for quality of reviewed items. This weekend effect is surprising given that studies usually report higher happiness levels and a better mood on weekends. The authors discuss several explanations related to where the review is submitted (platform characteristics), what the review is about (listing characteristics), and who submits the review (reviewer characteristics). They present evidence that temporal self-selection of reviewers is a dominant driver of the weekend effect. During the weekend, a different set of users—those more prone to write negative reviews—is more likely to leave a review. These findings complement extant research on review self-selection by adding a temporal layer to the self-selection processes inherent in online reviews. This article also highlights managerial implications by demonstrating that solicitations sent during the weekend (vs. weekday solicitation) lead to collecting more negative reviews.