Servicescape perception in restuarants and related TripAdvisor ratings

Eating is no longer merely a matter of survival for those with access to food. On the contrary, it has evolved into one of the most popular leisure activities, accompanied by a desire to share these experiences through various forms of communication, from postcards in the past to online reviews today. Today, countless reviews inundate the web, contributing to a vast flow of information consumers rely heavily on for their decisions. The significance of this electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) form is well-established in leisure studies, including leisure dining experiences. A Leisure Dining Experience (LDE) refers to an eating-out experience where customers dedicate a substantial amount of time to their meal, potentially comparable to home meal preparation. Consequently, LDEs are hosted in restaurants where, despite the high customer flow and relatively dense table arrangements, clients are served by waiting staff, leading to a meal duration of over an hour and generally congregate for casual, social occasions. Notably, the enhanced accessibility of text mining technologies has led to substantial research focused on extracting information from online restaurant reviews.

However, this stream of research often relies only on the data extracted from the eWOM platforms, limiting the generalisability of their findings. This characteristic highlights the need to integrate data from eWOM platforms – hence an indirect measurement – with direct ones, like consumer surveys. Moreover, due to bounded rationality, consumers often make decisions based on heuristics. People apply heuristics when processing information and making judgements, including when asked to rate the quality of LDEs. In this regard, the ratings received by the restaurant represent a performance heuristic that reflects the perceived overall quality of the experience. Therefore, given the relevance ratings play as restaurant performance heuristics and the threat posed by unreliable reviews, there is a need to assess their reliability.

This project combines data from online restaurant reviews with customer surveys following a LDE to explore the meaning behind restaurant ratings, particularly from TripAdvisor, one of the largest hospitality review websites. It aims to address the following research questions (RQ):

·       RQ1: Which aspects of the LDE are reflected by the online ratings?

·       RQ2: Are the TripAdvisor ratings a reliable representation of the restaurant experience?

To this end, this research aims to explore the cognitive processes underlying review ratings by connecting them to customer evaluations of LDEs, assessed through validated scales shortly after the leisure experience in the restaurant. This design will enable this research to evaluate whether online ratings can predict individual evaluations and verify their reliability as performance heuristics for practitioners and customers.

This dataset has been collected from a random sample of individuals through an online questionnaire in Italy. Respondents were asked to indicate the restaurant where they enjoyed a LDE within a month. The database includes a demographic section indicating the gender (variable name gender), the generational cohort (gen_cohort), the study title and the educational qualification held by the individual (study_title). In addition, 17  seven-point-likert-scale data based on Ryu and Jang's (2008) servicescape scale are presented (SER_SCA1 to SER_SCA17). Moreover, identification numbers for individuals (pers_id) and the evaluated restaurants (rist_id) are also included. After the data collection phase, the TripAdvisor overall ratings for each restaurant identified by the respondents were systematically retrieved and integrated into the dataset. Specifically, the restaurants' overall service score (service), the overall value score (q_p), the overall atmosphere score (atmosphere) and the overall global score (global).  TripAdvisor was selected for its balance of popularity and detailed review features. Unlike Google, which only displays overall ratings, and Yelp, which American tourists in Italy predominantly use, TripAdvisor allows for more comprehensive evaluations.