Value Bias in Yelp Restaurant Reviews

mjfii
November 22, 2015

Landscape and Problem:

  • Yelp maintains restaurant reviews and ratings from users,
  • The reviews are meant to help other user find what they are looking for, however,
  • They are subjective and factual information, such as price, may be considered in the ratings.

The Problem Defined: Are reviews biased toward the percieved 'value' of the user, and if so, to what degree?

Methodology:

  • Get and clean data from Yelp,
  • Categorize Frequencies,
  • Cluster Terms,
  • Cross-Tabulate Terms and Price Range, and
  • Perform Statistical Inference.

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Results:

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The second and third price group tiers are very biased when 'price' terms are mentioned.

Conclusion:

  • Yelp reviews contain a bias toward 'value',
  • The bias adversely affects ratings,
  • On average, the bias represents 0.16 stars, or approximately 4%, and
  • The bias is primarily found in the middle price range tiers.