Political Consumerism and the Emergence of Rare Information on User-Generated Content Platforms

Consumers are increasingly supporting businesses and brands that align closely with their values, engaging in acts of political consumerism. Despite the growing demand to support minority-owned businesses, discovering these establishments through traditional channels remains challenging. In this study, we examine whether and how online reviews facilitate the discovery of Black-owned businesses. We leverage GPS-enabled foot traffic data, hand-collected data from a directory of Black-owned restaurants, online reviews from Yelp.com, and zip code-level demographic data to understand the potential mechanisms driving this behavior. Our results suggest that Black-owned restaurants receiving reviews mentioning Black ownership as a product attribute experience about a 10% increase in foot traffic compared with those that do not receive such reviews. Furthermore, we find that reviews mentioning Black ownership primarily benefit Black-owned restaurants located in cities with lower segregation and racial isolation and those where minority ownership is not easily inferable from the kind of cuisine served. Our findings also indicate that online reviews mentioning Black ownership increase foot traffic to Black-owned restaurants by enhancing interracial exposure. Non-White consumers who patronize these restaurants experience an increased likelihood of encountering White consumers after the restaurants receive a review mentioning Black ownership. Collectively, our results demonstrate the value of user-generated content in enabling political consumerism, even without targeted interventions from digital platforms or voluntary disclosure of race by business owners.

This paper was accepted by D. J. Wu, information systems.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.02789.