Critics’ conformity to consumers in movie evaluation

Movie critics have long been assumed to act independently in evaluating movies. We challenge this assumption by examining consumers’ influence on critics. Drawing on the informational-normative framework of conformity, we theorize that critics conform to consumers in rating movies. This conformity results from a normative influence, in which the goal of creating favorable relationships with the public motivates critics to shift their ratings to reflect popular taste in movie evaluation. We then investigate four potential moderators of the main effect. Results from a dataset of 408 U.S. movies support the influence of consumer ratings on critic ratings; this influence increases when a movie receives more consumer reviews and decreases when critics publish reviews in media outlets for the entertainment industry (vs. general media). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.