Start Date
12-13-2015
Description
Content generation is a critical aspect of user engagement in online communities, yet many platforms face a problem of under-provision. We focus here on the potential of different types of incentives (social and monetary) for stimulating the production of online reviews. Partnering with a Chinese online clothing retailer, we conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment, in which we consider the independent and joint effects of monetary payment and descriptive social norms on the quantity and quality of reviews. We find that money attracts a greater volume of reviews, descriptive social norms attract greater quality, and combining the two yields the greatest benefit in both respects. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and practice, and highlight opportunities for future work in this area.
Recommended Citation
Burtch, Gordon; Hong, Yili; Bapna, Ravi; and Griskevicius, Vladas, "What Are Social Incentives Worth? A Randomized Field Experiment in User Content Generation" (2015). ICIS 2015 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2015/proceedings/EconofIS/1
What Are Social Incentives Worth? A Randomized Field Experiment in User Content Generation
Content generation is a critical aspect of user engagement in online communities, yet many platforms face a problem of under-provision. We focus here on the potential of different types of incentives (social and monetary) for stimulating the production of online reviews. Partnering with a Chinese online clothing retailer, we conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment, in which we consider the independent and joint effects of monetary payment and descriptive social norms on the quantity and quality of reviews. We find that money attracts a greater volume of reviews, descriptive social norms attract greater quality, and combining the two yields the greatest benefit in both respects. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and practice, and highlight opportunities for future work in this area.