Presenter: Xitong Li, HEC Paris

Link to personal website

Title: "Word-of-AI:” Revealing and Understanding the Match-Enhancing Effect of Generative AI Reviews Summary

Abstract: Online platforms are increasingly integrating generative artificial intelligence (GAI) generated content, yet its impacts require careful investigation. This study examines how GAI reviews summary (GAIRS), a unique policy recently adopted by major travel platforms and shopping platforms, affect consumer-product matching quality. Three sets of cross-platform difference-in-differences analyses on review information for hotels, restaurants, and physical consumer goods demonstrate that GAIRS enhances consumer-product matching, manifested by increased average rating and decreased rating dispersion. Two follow-up preregistered online controlled experiments provide direct causal evidence for the match-enhancing effect of GAIRS, as well as comprehension augmentation and consideration set expansion as two key mechanisms underlying the match-enhancing effect GAIRS. Specifically, the two experiments demonstrate that the presence (vs. absence) of GAIRS enhances consumer-product matching by enabling consumers to both gain a more nuanced understanding of product features (comprehension augmentation) and browse a larger number of products (consideration set expansion). This research highlights GAIRS’ potential as a novel GAI application for enhancing consumer-product matching on online platforms.

Bio: Dr. Xitong Li is a professor of information technologies at HEC Paris and a research fellow of Hi! PARIS, the joint research center between HEC Paris and Polytechnic Institute of Paris (2026 QS World University Ranking #41). His primary research interests are in the economics of information and AI technologies, including social media, FinTech, digital marketing, online education, and human-AI/algorithms collaboration. Xitong’s research appears in leading journals, such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, Management Information Systems Quarterly, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Management Information Systems, and various ACM/IEEE Transactions. Xitong’s research has been granted by ANR AAPG France (solo PI), equivalent to National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US. Xitong currently serves as Associate Editor for Management Science and Associate Editor for Information Systems Research, and Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management. Xitong received INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award in 2022, and the HEC Foundation Researcher of the Year Award in 2023. Xitong served as a Program Co-chair of the 42nd International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2021, the premier international conference in IS. He received a Ph.D. in management from MIT Sloan School and a Ph.D. in engineering from Tsinghua University. 

Host: Surabhi Verma

Organisers: Surabhi Verma and Hartanto Wong