How does the COVID-19 pandemic influence tourist rating behaviour? An empirical exploration based on expectation theory

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious consequences to the world economy and the tourism and hospitality industries, which depend on human movement, have been greatly affected. Unlike previous studies that have mainly investigated different focus attributes in online reviews after the COVID-19 pandemic, this study focuses on how such a health crisis affects individual tourists’ rating behaviour. To address the research question, this study collected data from Qunar.com and adopted an interrupted time-series strategy in which the treated observations are set as tourists’ rating behaviour after the pandemic and control observations are set as tourists’ rating behaviour before the pandemic. Our results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic positively affects tourist ratings for hotels, and such a positive effect is strengthened when tourists focus on health-related issues or travel for business. However, such an influence is weakened if hotels have a high star level. This study offers implications for both academics and practitioners.