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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 PublicationInformation Systems Research
ABS Journal Level4*
ISSN1047-7047
Volume35Issue: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.

KeywordInformation Feed Integration Online q&a Communities User-generated Content (Ugc) Image Concern Natural Experiment Regression DiscontInuity In Time (Rdit)
DOI10.1287/isre.2022.0043
Indexed BySSCI
WOS Research AreaInformation Science & Library Science ; Business & Economics
WOS SubjectInformation Science & Library Science ; Management
WOS IDWOS:001077921300001
PublisherINFORMS, 5521 RESEARCH PARK DR, SUITE 200, CATONSVILLE, MD 21228
Scopus ID2-s2.0-85200434555
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Citation statistics
Document TypeJournal article
CollectionFaculty of Business Administration
DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Corresponding AuthorLI GEN
Affiliation1.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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