Timing of Movie Reviews and Box Office Success: Considering the Volume and Valence of the Reviews

영화평 작성시기가 영화의 주별 흥행에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

This study investigates the effects of the volume and valence of the movie reviews on the weekly box-office revenues. Existing literature shows that only the volume of movie reviews influences the box office results, but not valence. However, it has limitations in that it includes only the positivity or negativity ratio of the reviews, not the strength of the valence. In order to overcome such limitations, this study includes the degree of valence. This study used approximately 1.3 million reviews about 300 movies as the sample which was collected from a movie review site in an online portal, that is, movie.naver.com. SPSS was used to test the proposed model. The results of this study show different findings compared to those of the previous studies. First, the volume of movie reviews has been a consistent predictor of the box office success throughout the study periods. Second, the ratio of positive reviews has no impact on the first week's results, but shows significant effects on the box office results during the second week. Third, regarding the degree of positivity or negativity in reviews, the degree of positivity has a significant impact on the box office results only during the first week, while the degree of negativity does not have any significant effects on the results. However, from the second week, the situation is reversed; that is, only the degree of negativity has a significant impact on the box office results, but not the positivity.