{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,27]],"date-time":"2025-10-27T20:51:55Z","timestamp":1761598315923,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":68,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,16]],"date-time":"2021-03-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1615852800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IMDS"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2021,6,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>This study examines whether a higher interest alignment between online travel agencies (OTAs; hosting platform) and hotels (business owners) will intensify review manipulation activities.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>With a panel data set collected from a Chinese online travel agency and a travel search engine, the authors develop a matching-based difference-indifference approach to examine the presence of partnership-intensified review manipulation.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors find that the ratings of agency's partner hotels (with a higher interest alignment) are abnormally higher than those of matched non-partner hotels (with a lower interest alignment), after they are benchmarked with their ratings on the search engine (without a partnership business model). Further, the analysis results indicate that this partnership-intensified manipulation deteriorates the hotel's sales performance because of damaged customer trust and satisfaction.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>Previous studies implicitly assume that review manipulator is independent from the hosting platform. This is the first study examining the role of the hosting platform in review manipulations.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/imds-11-2020-0657","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,15]],"date-time":"2021-03-15T23:54:21Z","timestamp":1615852461000},"page":"1435-1456","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Does interest alignment between hotels and online travel agencies intensify review 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