Due to the development of information technology, online travel agencies (OTAs) are able to provide prospective customers with rich information from previous customers, resulting in the improvement of their comparative advantage in the fierce OTA business field. For example, many OTAs simultaneously provide the cumulative average rating as well as timerelevant information, the most recently posted reviews to satisfy the customers. When these two types of information conflict, from the perspective of behavioral decision theory, people are likely to perceive the average rating as the initial anchor and use the most recent reviews (recent positive or negative trend) to adjust their evaluation on hotel services. To identify the relative relationship between the two different kinds of information on behavioral decision processes, we conducted two studies: quasi-experimental empirical approach to examine the interaction in review generation process (providing the information) and experimental research design to explore the relative relationship in the review consumption process (making purchase decision by using the information). The results show that, as the impacts of the most recently posted reviews increase, review posters tend to deviate from the recent trend regardless of direction in review generation. Meanwhile review consumers tend to only conform to the negative trend in review consumption. Based on the findings, this study provides theoretical and practical implications regarding the relative relationship between the cumulative average rating and the recently posted reviews, and their different impacts on online review generation and consumption.
