To Disclose or Not to Disclose, That Is the Question: Evidence from TripAdvisor: Short Paper

Online consumers may be hesitant to disclose personal information due to potential threats, leading to an impact on their content generation. This, in turn, poses a challenge to the credibility and sustainability of online reviews on digital platforms. To address this issue, our research examines how consumers' self-disclosure affects their rating behaviors and the existence of the positive-negative asymmetry based on negativity bias. Utilizing data from TripAdvisor, our analysis demonstrated that consumers' self- disclosure had a negative impact on rating inconsistency and a stronger herding behavior for those submitting ratings lower than the hotel’s average ratings. Additionally, we found that certain factors, such as more peer disclosure, longer time intervals between check-in and review posting, and greater expertise, can mitigate the negative impact of self-disclosure on rating behavior. Our findings make critical contributions to the extant literature, as well as provide significant managerial implications to participants in the digital platform.