When the Bad Apps Go Away: The Spillover Effect of Removing Unethical Apps from Rankings on Ethical Apps’ Performance

Unethical behaviors in app markets are rising, making digital service governance and management crucial. Using daily Apple App Store panel data, this study examines how removal from ranking lists (RRL) affects ethical apps. Guided by migration theory, we analyze three mediating effect: punished apps' performance as a push factor, developer update behavior as a pull factor, and users’ expectation gaps as a mooring factor. We employ a pre‑trained BERT model to measure expectation gaps. Results show that RRL weakens punished apps’ performance, serving as a push factor that boosts unpunished apps’ ranking. Reduced update incentives among compliant developers act as a pull factor limiting performance gains. Narrowed user expectation gaps, as a mooring factor, enhance unpunished apps’ performance. Moreover, Higher search volume for unpunished apps strengthens the positive spillover from RRL to their performance via push factor. Our findings offer practical insights for developers and platform regulators.