Bad Apples on Rotten Tomatoes: Critics, Crowds, and Gender Bias in Product Ratings

Abstract

Consumers considering the purchase of experience goods can rely on both critics and crowd-based evaluations to guide their decisions. Because of divergent incentives, however, critics and crowd assessments may incorporate different information. In the context of the movie industry, I investigate whether crowd reviewers provide gender-neutral product evaluations relative to professional critics. I classify movies as male or female based on the gender composition of their cast and estimate how the gender gap in movie rating scores diffe Show more