Abstract:
Social media has been widely used as a channel to catch up with real-time occurrences in the
globe and keep connected with social ties. Practitioners have also been aware of its economic
potential and designed various digital business models to monetize user-generated content
(UGC) on social media, such as advertising revenue model, premium subscription model, and
pay-per-item model. Paid question and answer (Q&A) is a novel pay-per-item model,
empowering influential users to profit from answering users’ personalized questions. Recently,
an increasing number of social media platforms have launched paid Q&A services, such as
Fenda, Weibo Q&A, and Zhihu Paid Consultation.
On paid Q&A, the platform authorizes influential users, who long perform well in creating
quality content, to become answerers. A user (asker) nominates an answerer to answer his/her
question and prepays a price (known as question price) that the answerer sets. Once the
answerer responds to the question, the question with a paid link to the answer will be
automatically published on the answerers’ homepage and appear in the followers’ Home
timelines. Users (answer viewers) who are interested in the question and answer can pay a
small flat fee to view the answer to the question (viewership). All users can interact with each
piece of published Q&A through tapping the like, share, and comment icons. One piece of paid
Q&A has the same format as general posts in social media. Unlike previous monetization
models, paid Q&A charges a nominal flat fee for viewership. More uniquely, the asker can
share the proceeds of the viewership with the answerer.
This novel business model challenges the prior literature on UGC and user engagement due to
the uniqueness of paid Q&A in the content creation and consumption ways and the economic
incentive. First, the majority of the existing research focuses on the free context. A few studies
that investigate user engagement in the paid context (e.g., paid news in New York Times and
paid music in Last.fm) are insufficient for us to understand certain users’ behavioral
mechanisms in the paid Q&A context. It is even rare to see that prior Q&A studies conduct
their research from an economic perspective. Second, existing literature has examined many
financial and social factors influencing content creators’ (i.e., answerer) contribution behavior,
while limited research explores antecedents of content consumers’ payment and interaction
behaviors. Therefore, this thesis, based on the paid Q&A context, addresses knowledge gaps
regarding three contextual but representative users, (1) answer viewers: what factors drive
viewers to pay for answers? (2) askers: how can askers frame profitable questions? (3) social
interaction users: whether users perform different social interactions (e.g., like and comment)
via distinct cognitive ways?
This thesis conducted three empirical studies to fill up the three research gaps. Drawing upon
the signaling theory and previous related literature, study 1 developed a model to examine the
direct and interaction effects of social and economic signals on the paid answer viewership.
Based on the social presence theory and previous related literature, study 2 developed a model
to examine the relationships between linguistic features of the question content and an asker’s
profit. Study 3 employed the dual-process theory, uses and gratification theory, and previous
related literature to develop a model for examining whether users give likes and comments
differently when reacting to the answerer and answer’s characteristics.
The three research models were tested by secondary data collected from Weibo Q&A. Weibo
Q&A is a paid Q&A service launched by Sina Weibo, one of China's largest social media
platforms. Regression models were used to analyze the data and test hypotheses in three models.
Study 1 found that the answerer’s social media status (i.e., membership level) and social media
popularity (e.g., follower volume) as well as the Q&A’s social favor (i.e., like volume),
diffusion (i.e., sharing volume), and feedback (i.e., comment volume) positively impact the
paid answer viewership. Besides, results suggest that question price enhances the impacts of
social media status, social favor, and social diffusion on the paid answer viewership. However,
question price weakens the effects of social media popularity and social feedback. Study 2
found that the question informativeness has an inverted U effect on an askers’ profit from one
question, and the sentiment extremity reflected by the question content increases the askers’
profit. Study 3 found that the question price and answerer’s social media popularity and
voluntary contributions (i.e., free post volume) significantly influence social engagement, i.e.,
likes and comments. Further, their direct effects are significantly greater on the low-cognitive
social engagement, i.e., likes. In contrast, the interaction effects between the question price and
the answerer’s characteristics are stronger on the high-cognitive social engagement, i.e.,
comments. Theoretical and management implications, limitations, and future research are
discussed in each study separately. Finally, this thesis offers a conclusion by summarizing
findings and contributions.