Abstract
We investigated how social diffusion increased client participation in an online rating system and, in turn, how this herding effect may affect the metrics of client feedback over the course of years. In a field study, we set up a transparent feedback system for university services: During the process of making service requests, clients were presented with short-term trends of client satisfaction with relevant service outcomes. Deploying this feedback system initially increased satisfaction moderately. Thereafter, mean satisfaction levels remained stable between 50% and 60%. Interestingly, at the individual client level, satisfaction increased significantly with experience despite the lack of any global trend across all users. These conflicting results can be explained at the social network level: If satisfied clients attracted new clients with more negative attitudes (a herding effect), then the net increase in service clients may dampen changes in global trends at the individual level. Three observations support this hypothesis: first, the number of service clients providing feedback increased monotonically over time. Second, spatial analysis of service requests showed a pattern of expansion from floor to floor. Finally, satisfaction increased over iterations only in clients who scored below average.
Highlights
Feedback has an important role in a wide range of social phenomena, from the evolution of cooperation (Nowak, 2006) to sustainable economic development (Platteau, 2000) and, poverty traps (Adato, Carter, & May, 2006)
Our results suggest that the effects of launching transparent feedback systems on monopolistic service provisions might be complex, and simple cumulative performance estimates have limited bearing on capturing it
Even though we did not observe any global trends in client satisfaction over 4 years (Figure 2A), a detailed analysis detected an increased satisfaction with experience at the individual client level (Figure 2B)
Summary
Feedback has an important role in a wide range of social phenomena, from the evolution of cooperation (Nowak, 2006) to sustainable economic development (Platteau, 2000) and, poverty traps (Adato, Carter, & May, 2006). The issue of engendering a feedback loop is a central conundrum: Many institutions attempt to get the public more involved in improving their services by developing systems for eliciting feedback and evaluations from their clients (Miller, Resnick, & Zeckhauser, 2002; Pavett, 1983; Vigoda, 2000). Creating a sustained feedback loop between users and public service providers is difficult (Jaeger & Thompson, 2003). The public sector adds an additional obstacle: The monopoly nature of service provision. Little is known about how individual satisfaction changes over time and how social networks affect participation, and free ridership (Marwell & Ames, 1979)—especially in monopolistic service provision settings such as found in the public sector (Vedung, 1997)
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