Dynamic Effects among Movie Ratings, Movie Revenues, and Viewer Satisfaction

TLDR

This research investigates how movie ratings from professional critics, amateur communities, and viewers themselves influence key movie performance measures such as revenues and new ratings. Using individual viewer‑level data, the study highlights how viewers’ own viewing and rating histories and movie communities’ collective opinions explain viewer satisfaction. The study finds that early revenues boost later ratings, high advertising on well‑rated films maximizes revenue, sequels earn more but are rated lower, rating components predict viewer satisfaction after controlling for film characteristics, repeated viewing makes audiences more critical, and heavy viewers exhibit a U‑shaped relationship between genre preference and rating.

Abstract

This research investigates how movie ratings from professional critics, amateur communities, and viewers themselves influence key movie performance measures (i.e., movie revenues and new movie ratings). Using movie-level data, the authors find that high early movie revenues enhance subsequent movie ratings. They also find that high advertising spending on movies supported by high ratings maximizes the movie's revenues. Furthermore, they empirically show that sequel movies tend to reap more revenues but receive lower ratings than originals. Using individual viewer–level data, this research highlights how viewers’ own viewing and rating histories and movie communities’ collective opinions explain viewer satisfaction. The authors find that various aspects of these ratings explain viewers’ new movie ratings as a measure of viewer satisfaction, after controlling for movie characteristics. Furthermore, they find that viewers’ movie experiences can cause them to become more critical in ratings over time. Finally, they find a U-shaped relationship between viewers’ genre preferences and genre-specific movie ratings for heavy viewers.