Residential College | false |
Status | 已發表Published |
Consequences of Information Feed Integration on User Engagement and Contribution: A Natural Experiment in an Online Knowledge-Sharing Community | |
CAO ZIKE1; ZHU YINGPENG2; LI GEN3; QIU LIANGFEI4 | |
2024-09 | |
Source Publication | Information Systems Research |
ABS Journal Level | 4* |
ISSN | 1047-7047 |
Volume | 35Issue:3Pages:917-1506 |
Abstract | Many online communities that rely on effortful, voluntary content contributions offer additional content curation tools to facilitate social interactions and encourage user contributions. Any platform that offers two or more heterogeneous content types (e.g., expert knowledge and social posts) faces a choice about the presentation format: whether to display the content types separately or in an integrated information feed. We leverage a natural experiment on Zhihu, a Q&A platform that offers a social-interaction-oriented functionality called Ideas. Zhihu initially presented answers (expert knowledge content) and ideas (social posts) in two different information feeds, but the platform integrated ideas into the same information feed as answers in June 2019. We find that information feed integration significantly decreased user engagement with and contribution of both ideas and answers. We hypothesize that users decreased their engagement because the juxtaposition of incongruous types of content increased mindset switching and cognitive strain. This hypothesis is supported by an additional laboratory experiment. We also present evidence showing that contributions decreased both because of the decrease in engagement (weaker social recognition incentives) and because integration heightened concerns that posting ideas would dilute the contributor’s professional image. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications for any platform that hosts heterogeneous content. |
Keyword | Information Feed Integration Online q&a Communities User-generated Content (Ugc) Image Concern Natural Experiment Regression DiscontInuity In Time (Rdit) |
DOI | 10.1287/isre.2022.0043 |
Indexed By | SSCI |
WOS Research Area | Information Science & Library Science ; Business & Economics |
WOS Subject | Information Science & Library Science ; Management |
WOS ID | WOS:001077921300001 |
Publisher | INFORMS, 5521 RESEARCH PARK DR, SUITE 200, CATONSVILLE, MD 21228 |
Scopus ID | 2-s2.0-85200434555 |
Fulltext Access | |
Citation statistics | |
Document Type | Journal article |
Collection | Faculty of Business Administration DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT |
Corresponding Author | LI GEN |
Affiliation | 1.Zhejiang University Department of Data Science and Engineering Management 2.University of Macau Department of Accounting and Information Management 3.Fudan University School of Management 4.University of Florida Department of Information Systems and Operations Management |
Recommended Citation GB/T 7714 | CAO ZIKE,ZHU YINGPENG,LI GEN,et al. Consequences of Information Feed Integration on User Engagement and Contribution: A Natural Experiment in an Online Knowledge-Sharing Community[J]. Information Systems Research, 2024, 35(3), 917-1506. |
APA | CAO ZIKE., ZHU YINGPENG., LI GEN., & QIU LIANGFEI (2024). Consequences of Information Feed Integration on User Engagement and Contribution: A Natural Experiment in an Online Knowledge-Sharing Community. Information Systems Research, 35(3), 917-1506. |
MLA | CAO ZIKE,et al."Consequences of Information Feed Integration on User Engagement and Contribution: A Natural Experiment in an Online Knowledge-Sharing Community".Information Systems Research 35.3(2024):917-1506. |
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