Title: Ranking based on user comments with multiple criteria: the case of Greek restaurants in Athens

Authors: Dimitrios Novas; Dimitrios Papakyriakopoulos; Elizabeth Powlesland-Kartaloglou; Anastasia Griva

Addresses: West Attica University, Egaleo City, 250 Thivon & P. Ralli Str., Egaleo, Postal Code 12241, Athens, Greece ' West Attica University, Egaleo City, 250 Thivon & P. Ralli Str., Egaleo, Postal Code 12241, Athens, Greece ' West Attica University, Egaleo City, 250 Thivon & P. Ralli Str., Egaleo, Postal Code 12241, Athens, Greece ' Lero – The Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, University of Galway, Upper Newcastle Road, H91wn80, Galway, Ireland

Abstract: User generated content (UGC) is a valuable resource for the multi-criteria decision-making process. Platforms, such as TripAdvisor, enable the registration of comments and post rankings. However, existing ranking mechanisms are not transparent, making it impossible to evaluate their integrity and accuracy. Additionally, it has been shown that these rankings are, in some cases, inaccurate and misleading. This prompted the need for developing a ranking mechanism based on UGC to capture experiences and feelings, rather than quantitative data (bubbles/stars). The proposed ranking mechanism employs LDA to generate topics, which are transformed with fuzzy logic to variables, used to produce ranking results. We empirically studied the proposed ranking mechanism using TripAdvisor's user comments on a sample of restaurants located in Athens, Greece and compared the results to a simple quantitative ranking scheme. In some cases, the ranking differed. Further investigation is needed to address the limitations encountered in this research.

Keywords: multi-criteria analysis; text mining; TripAdvisor; ranking; fuzzy numbers; restaurants.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCDM.2023.134135

International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making, 2023 Vol.9 No.3, pp.204 - 230

Accepted: 20 Jan 2023
Published online: 11 Oct 2023 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article