Abstract: Most home sharing businesses are individually operated with fierce competition, which rely heavily on consumer reviews. For newly launched businesses, getting more positive reviews would gain and sustain competitive advantages. However, online review manipulation has costs in business practice, so the motivation to manipulate is stronger for newly launched businesses. This study collects the online review data of home sharing businesses that are listed on both Qunar (allows no-order reviews) and Tujia to perform an empirical analysis. The empirical results suggest that newly launched businesses have more positive reviews, a significant signal of manipulation. Further empirical evidence indicates that the reviews on newly launched businesses are largely posted by inexperienced users. The findings of this study offer direct practical implications for the regulation of home sharing businesses and platforms to promote the healthy development of the home sharing industry.

Key words: home sharing, online review manipulation, online rating, review sentiment, reviewer attribute