Corruption at Home, Emotion Abroad: How Perceived National Corruption Shapes Tourist Review Sentiment

This study examines how tourists’ home countries’ perceived corruption influences the textual emotional valence of online hotel reviews. Drawing on the expectancy–disconfirmation and institutional trust theories, it investigates how macro-institutional factors shape sentiment expression in service evaluations. A cross-national dataset of 56,260 hotel reviews in New York City from Booking.com was analyzed using sentiment analysis, with country-level corruption introduced as a contextual moderator. Results show that higher home-country corruption is associated with lower positive sentiment, whereas tourists from low-corruption countries display stronger emotional responses, both positive and negative, to experience–expectation discrepancies. Supplementary analyses, including a robustness check of 242,541 hotel reviews in Dubai City from Booking.com, reproduce the broader directional pattern across settings. The study positions national corruption as a relevant contextual predictor of tourist sentiment in online platforms, expanding service evaluation models to incorporate macro-institutional conditions. Practically, the findings urge review platforms and marketers to interpret review sentiment by considering institutional background, as both service experience and institutionally conditioned expectations shape emotional expression.