TOWARD PROFITABLE QUESTIONS ON PAID Q&A: A PERSPECTIVE FROM QUESTION FRAMING

Authors

Xueping Yang, University of AucklandFollow
Jonathan Ye, University of WaterlooFollow
Xinwei Wang, University of AucklandFollow

Abstract

An increasing number of social media platforms have launched the paid question and answer (Q&A) service, but most of them failed. Recently, the profit-share scheme creates a new opportunity for paid Q&A to retain users. It allows askers to share the answer viewership revenue with answerers, which advantages to fulfill askers’ extrinsic needs, such as offsetting question cost and gaining a profit. This study explores how faskers can maximize their profits by framing a good question. Drawing upon social presence theory, we identify two content features-question informativeness and sentiment extremity- exemplifying the social presence of the question content. We test a polynomial regression model with 9,223 unique fee-charged questions from Weibo Q&A. The operationalization of our constructs are based on collected textual data (question content) and implemented with the LIWC text analysis tool. Results show that question informativeness has an inverted U-shaped relationship with askers’ financial gain, and sentiment extremity has a positive relationship. Our findings contribute to the previous literature by proposing a nuanced research model that demonstrates the impacts of question content features on askers’ financial gain from paid Q&A. Also, question askers, answerers, and the platform can acquire practical implications from our findings.

Recommended Citation

Yang, Xueping; Ye, Jonathan; and Wang, Xinwei, "TOWARD PROFITABLE QUESTIONS ON PAID Q&A: A PERSPECTIVE FROM QUESTION FRAMING" (2020). In Proceedings of the 28th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), An Online AIS Conference, June 15-17, 2020.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2020_rp/40