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Eliciting Honest Feedback in Electronic Markets

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  • Miller, Nolan

    (Harvard U)

  • Resnick, Paul

    (U of Michigan)

  • Zeckhauser, Richard

    (Harvard U)

Abstract

Recommender and reputation systems seek to inform potential customers by securing current consumers' feedback about products and sellers. This paper proposes a payment-based system to induce honest reporting of feedback. The system applies proper scoring rules to each buyer's report, looking to how well it predicts the report of a later buyer. Honest reporting proves to be a Nash Equilibrium. To balance the budget, the incentive payment to each buyer is charged to someone other than the one whose report that buyer is asked to predict. In addition, payment schemes can be scaled to induce appropriate effort by raters.

Suggested Citation

  • Miller, Nolan & Resnick, Paul & Zeckhauser, Richard, 2002. "Eliciting Honest Feedback in Electronic Markets," Working Paper Series rwp02-039, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp02-039
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ofer Tchernichovski & Marissa King & Peter Brinkmann & Xanadu Halkias & Daniel Fimiarz & Laurent Mars & Dalton Conley, 2017. "Tradeoff Between Distributed Social Learning and Herding Effect in Online Rating Systems," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(1), pages 21582440176, February.
    2. Paul Resnick & Richard Zeckhauser & John Swanson & Kate Lockwood, 2006. "The value of reputation on eBay: A controlled experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(2), pages 79-101, June.
    3. Gary Bolton & Elena Katok & Axel Ockenfels, 2002. "Bridging the Trust Gap in Electronic Markets," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2002-26, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    4. Chrysanthos Dellarocas, 2005. "Reputation Mechanism Design in Online Trading Environments with Pure Moral Hazard," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 209-230, June.
    5. Chrysanthos Dellarocas, 2003. "The Digitization of Word of Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(10), pages 1407-1424, October.
    6. Dellarocas, Chrysanthos, 2003. "Efficiency and Robustness of Binary Feedback Mechanisms in Trading Environments with Moral Hazard," Working papers 4297-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    7. Axel Ockenfels, 2002. "Reputationsmechanismen auf Internet-Marktplattformen - Theorie und Empirie -," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2002-46, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    8. Chen Shaogang & Chen Xianle & Jing Yanfei, 2020. "On the Competitive Mechanism Concerning the Third-Party Transaction in Chinese Market," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 33-52, February.

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