Wichitans kinder in local restaurant reviews than most cities’ residents

We already know that a half-star improvement on Yelp nearly doubles the chance that a restaurant will sell out its seats at night, according to a study of Berkeley economists, and that travelers read between six and 12 hotel reviews before choosing a hotel. So online ratings matter.

We also know that some cities receive harsher restaurant reviews than others and that one of the reasons is people tend to give better reviews when the weather is nice or will be more forgiving for longer waits if they live in a larger city. Studies have also shown that positive reviews of expensive restaurants tend to use adjectives tied to sexual pleasure, such as “seductive,” whereas positive reviews of cheap restaurants use similes or metaphors of drug addiction, such as “these fries are like crack.”

Now, a new study shows that locals are much more likely to give harsh online restaurant reviews than tourists, according to researchers at Temple University, Arizona State University and the University of Minnesota. The researchers analyzed data from TripAdvisor to find out how reviews changed depending on the location of the person writing the review, and found that visitors tend to like the local food better than natives.

The Eagle analyzed the top 30 Wichita restaurants listed on TripAdvisor and found that 45 percent of poor and terrible reviews came from Wichita residents and 66 percent of one- and two-star reviews came from Kansas residents. The Eagle’s informal survey counted only the one- and two-star reviews that listed their hometown.

This is similar to the total rate of excellent, five-star positive reviews for the top restaurant, Il Vicino Wood Oven Pizza. About 50 percent of the 61 top reviews from people who listed their location came from Wichitans, and 66 percent of the top reviews came from Kansas residents. About the same percentage of top reviews came from Wichita and Kansas as the bottom reviews.

A more complete study would have to look at the total number of reviews of each rating level of every restaurant. But this informal survey suggests that Wichita residents are no more harsh than visitors, while locals in other cities are more savage about rating their local cuisine.

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Wichitans kinder in local restaurant reviews than most cities’ residents."