TY - GEN
T1 - What are social incentives worth? A randomized field experiment in user content generation
AU - Burtch, Gordon
AU - Hong, Yili
AU - Bapna, Ravi
AU - Griskevicius, Vladas
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - 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 (descriptive social norms and money) to stimulate the production of online reviews. Partnering with a Chinese online clothing retailer, we conducted a large-scale randomized field experiment, in which we considered the independent and joint effects of monetary payment and descriptive social norms on the quantity and quality of reviews. We found 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 mechanisms underlying these effects as well as the implications of our results for theory and practice. We also highlight potentially fruitful avenues of future research.
AB - 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 (descriptive social norms and money) to stimulate the production of online reviews. Partnering with a Chinese online clothing retailer, we conducted a large-scale randomized field experiment, in which we considered the independent and joint effects of monetary payment and descriptive social norms on the quantity and quality of reviews. We found 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 mechanisms underlying these effects as well as the implications of our results for theory and practice. We also highlight potentially fruitful avenues of future research.
KW - Experimental economics
KW - Online reviews
KW - Social norms
KW - User-generated content
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126579992&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85126579992&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85126579992
SN - 9780996683111
T3 - 2015 International Conference on Information Systems: Exploring the Information Frontier, ICIS 2015
BT - 2015 International Conference on Information Systems
PB - Association for Information Systems
T2 - 2015 International Conference on Information Systems: Exploring the Information Frontier, ICIS 2015
Y2 - 13 December 2015 through 16 December 2015
ER -