Kovacs and Starkey (2014) investigate how an increase in status can lead to less favourable quality evaluations. They study reader reviews on goodreads.com and focus on books that either won prestigious awards or were shortlisted. Prizewinning books 'attract more readers once an award has been announced and readers ratings tend to fall faster compared to books that were nominated, but did not win. The authors identify two causes for this effect. Winning a prize can attract a more diverse audience to the book and the fact that a book has won may be off-putting to some readers and thus elicit negative reviews.
Kovacs, B and Sharkey, A. J. (2014) The paradox of publicity: how awards can negatively affect the evaluation of quality. Administrative science quarterly 59 (1), 1-33.