Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
PACIS2026-1467
Description
Community-based Q&A platforms increasingly mandate identity disclosure to improve accountability, yet such policies may discourage users from sharing personal experiences. This study examines how the removal of virtual anonymity affects narrative contributions and engagement in online health communities. Leveraging Zhihu’s July 2023 platform-wide ban on anonymous answering as a natural experiment, we use a difference-in-differences design and compare users who previously used anonymity with those who never did. Results show that forced virtual identity disclosure significantly reduces narrative health answers and downstream engagement, including upvotes and comments. Mediation analysis indicates that suppressed narrativity explains approximately 36% of the decline in upvotes. The findings reveal an unintended cost of accountability: identity disclosure can silence vulnerable users and weaken the empathetic value of user-generated health content.
Recommended Citation
SHEN, Hongchuan; Lin, Yan; YUAN, Wanci; and Zhu, Yingpeng, "The Cost of Accountability: How Virtual Identity Disclosure Suppresses Personal Narratives and Platform Engagement" (2026). PACIS 2026 Proceedings. 4.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2026/sharing/sharing/4
The Cost of Accountability: How Virtual Identity Disclosure Suppresses Personal Narratives and Platform Engagement
Community-based Q&A platforms increasingly mandate identity disclosure to improve accountability, yet such policies may discourage users from sharing personal experiences. This study examines how the removal of virtual anonymity affects narrative contributions and engagement in online health communities. Leveraging Zhihu’s July 2023 platform-wide ban on anonymous answering as a natural experiment, we use a difference-in-differences design and compare users who previously used anonymity with those who never did. Results show that forced virtual identity disclosure significantly reduces narrative health answers and downstream engagement, including upvotes and comments. Mediation analysis indicates that suppressed narrativity explains approximately 36% of the decline in upvotes. The findings reveal an unintended cost of accountability: identity disclosure can silence vulnerable users and weaken the empathetic value of user-generated health content.
Comments
07-Platform