TABLE 3.
Variable definitions, measurements and data sources.
| Variables | Definitions | Measurements | Sources | Exemplary studies |
| REV i | Total box office | The natural logarithm of the total United States box office for movie i (USD/in million) | Box Office Mojoa | Joshi and Hanssens, 2009; Leenders and Eliashberg, 2011 |
| Critical reviews variable | ||||
| CRVAL i | Critical review valence | Mean of critical reviews published before movie i release (range between 0 and 100) | Metacriticb | Chen et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2015 |
| User reviews variable | ||||
| URVOL i | User review volume | The natural logarithm of the cumulative number of user reviews for movie i | IMDbc | Moe and Trusov, 2011; Zhou and Duan, 2016 |
| Community engagement variable | ||||
| POSTVOL i | User posting volume | The natural logarithm of the number of postings to the forum for movie i | IMDbc | Oestreicher-Singer and Zalmanson, 2013; Wu et al., 2018 |
| Control variables (movie characteristics) | ||||
| PB | Production budget | The natural logarithm of the production budget for movie i (USD/in million) | Box Office Mojoa | Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006 |
| SPA | Star power of actors | The aggregate star power of the actors for the past 3 years. The star power of the actors in a movie is combined with weightings. The weight takes the value 1 if the actor is ranked first, 0.5 if ranked second, 0.25 if ranked third and so forth. The final value is taken in natural logarithm form. | Box Office Mojoa | Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006 |
| SPD | Star power of directors | The aggregate star power of the directors for the past 3 years in natural logarithm form. | ||
| Table 2 continued | ||||
| SPP | Star power of producers | The aggregate star power of the producers for the past 3 years. The star power of the producers of a movie is combined with weightings. The weight takes the value 1 if the producer is ranked first, 0.5 if ranked second, 0.25 if ranked third, and so forth. The final value is taken in natural logarithm form. | ||
| SEQUEL | Sequel | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if movie i is a sequel and 0 otherwise. | IMDbc | Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006 |
| MPAA | MPAA rating | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if movie i is rated either G (General audiences) or PG (Parental guidance) by the MPAA and 0 otherwise. | IMDbc | Hennig-Thurau et al., 2015 |
| GRAA | Action movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is action or adventure and 0 otherwise. | IMDbc | Akdeniz and Talay, 2013 |
| GRAN | Animation movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is animation and 0 otherwise. | ||
| GRTHC | Thriller movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is thriller, horror or crime and 0 otherwise. | ||
| GRCD | Comedy or drama movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is comedy or drama and 0 otherwise. | ||
| GRSF | Sci-fi or fantasy movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is sci-fi or fantasy and 0 otherwise. | ||
| GRRO | Romance movie | A dummy variable that takes the value 1 if the genre of movie i is romance and 0 otherwise. | ||
aBox Office Mojo is a website in the United States.
It is available at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/.
bMetacritic denotes the name of a website.
It is available at http://www.metacritic.com/.
cIMDb is an abbreviation of “Internet Movie Database”.
The website is available at http://www.imdb.com/.