Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
Online community-based Question and Answer (Q&A) websites is popular in recent years. The main challenge for Q&A websites is how to motivate the participatory behaviors. Drawing on economic theory, we examine how the emergency of a financial incentive activity affect the free knowledge sharing behaviors and social activities. We apply difference-in-differences model with propensity score matching to evaluate the effect using a natural experimental dataset collected from a Chinese Q&A website. Our results show that the paid-for activity allows users to share more knowledge freely and build more social ties in the website. The results suggest that the financial incentive can increase users’ participatory behaviors significantly.
Recommended Citation
Yan, Zhijun; Kuang, Lini; Huang, He; and Yang, Han, "Do Financial Incentives Induce More Online Participatory Behaviors?" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 23.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/HumanBehavior/Presentations/23
Do Financial Incentives Induce More Online Participatory Behaviors?
Online community-based Question and Answer (Q&A) websites is popular in recent years. The main challenge for Q&A websites is how to motivate the participatory behaviors. Drawing on economic theory, we examine how the emergency of a financial incentive activity affect the free knowledge sharing behaviors and social activities. We apply difference-in-differences model with propensity score matching to evaluate the effect using a natural experimental dataset collected from a Chinese Q&A website. Our results show that the paid-for activity allows users to share more knowledge freely and build more social ties in the website. The results suggest that the financial incentive can increase users’ participatory behaviors significantly.