Recognise Me or Pay Me? How Rewards for Online Restaurant Reviews Impact Continuity: A Cross-Country Investigation

Customer reviews play a critical role in hospitality organisational success. However, little is known about why customers continue to review. Particularly, how different rewards incentivize reviewers, and how the impact of these incentives may vary between countries. To achieve this understanding, an online reviewer continuity model is theorized and tested with data from hospitality sites with an online survey of 398 Australian and 399 Thai restaurant reviewers using structural equation modelling. The results show the impact of recognition and monetary rewards on helping consumers and restaurants, and how this enhances the reviewers’ likelihood of posting future reviews. We also demonstrate important nuances of how these results differ for Australian and Thai reviewers. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are also discussed.