Does Wikipedia Matter? The Effect of Wikipedia on Tourist Choices
ZEW Discussion Paper No. 15-089 // 2015We document a causal influence of online user-generated information on realworld economic outcomes. In particular, we conduct a randomized field experiment to test whether additional information on Wikipedia about cities affects tourists’ choices of overnight visits. Our treatment of adding information to Wikipedia increases overnight visits by 9% during the tourist season. The impact comes mostly from improving the shorter and incomplete pages in Wikipedia.