From Street to Screen: Exploring the Impact of Road Network Centrality and eWOM on Restaurant Popularity in Tianjin

Online review platforms are now widely used and have a significant impact on consumer behavior. They enable catering suppliers to reach customers beyond geographical boundaries by providing electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) recommendations. This study aims to compare the effects of road centrality and eWOM on the popularity of different types of restaurants in Tianjin, China. Data was collected from dianping.com across six districts of the city. The popularity of restaurants was measured by the number of total reviews, reviews with pictures, and good and bad reviews received. The index of eWOM was established using the star rating, per capita consumption, food rating, environment rating, and service rating. Urban network analysis tools were used to calculate road centrality, and multiple linear regression, geographic detectors, and multi-scale geographic weighted regression techniques were employed to explore the factors that influence restaurant network reputation. The study highlights that eWOM has a more significant impact on restaurant popularity on a large scale, leisure food providers are most affected by eWOM, and the popularity of Chinese restaurants is more dependent on road centrality than Western restaurants, especially on a small scale. However, foreign cuisines are more dependent on large-scale road centrality. These findings provide valuable insights and recommendations for restaurant operators and urban planners to leverage road centrality and Internet word-of-mouth to increase the popularity of different types of restaurant networks.