U.S. and Chinese Customers Rate Differently: An Analysis of Yelp and Dianping Restaurant Reviews

This paper explores the differences between the U.S. and Chinese customer satisfaction in Chinese restaurants. Restaurant reviews from Yelp and Dianping are analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation in combination with ordinal regression. Results suggest U.S. and Chinese customers mention food, service, and price differently in association with ratings. For example, food mention is more strongly associated with ratings for Chinese reviewers; both groups tend to mention service in negative reviews, but the association is stronger for U.S. reviewers; U.S. reviewers also tend to mention price in negative reviews. Additionally, the results suggest cultural differences in both review sentiment and reliance on prior information. Our results suggest that review sentiment is more strongly associated with ratings in U.S. reviews, and Chinese review ratings are more positively associated with the restaurant’s prior average rating