Managing User-Generated Content: A Dynamic Rational Expectations Equilibrium Approach

Abstract

This paper considers the creation and consumption of content on user generated content platforms, e.g., reviews, articles, chat, videos, etc. On these platforms, users' expectations regarding the amount and timing of participation by others becomes germane to their own involvement levels. Accordingly, we develop a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model of joint consumption and generation of information. We estimate the model on a novel data set from a large Internet forum site and offer recommendations regarding strategies of managing sponsored content and content quality. We find sponsoring content can be effective at creating a self-sustaining network, but once the network tips, sponsored content does little to increase usage.

Structural Holes in the Multi-Sided Market: A Market Allocation Structure Analysis of China’s Car-Hailing Platform in the Context of Open Innovation

“…First, the integration of massive data resources enables the platform to effectively and simultaneously coordinate supply and demand, reducing its severe information asymmetry [27][28][29]. Second, as the thresholds of information and communication technology use are further lowered, platform construction increasingly depends on the data generated by terminal customers or customer-derived content [30,31]. Third, online platform is considered as the sustainable innovation platform by the aggregation of massive data resource for creating a large scale of data-intensive application scenarios [32].…”

Estimating Contextual Motivating Factors in Virtual Interorganizational Communities of Practice: Peer Effects and Organizational Influences

“…For example, Zhang and Zhu (2011) find that shrinking group size reduces social benefits, which negatively affects individuals' contribution levels in Chinese Wikipedia. Ahn et al (2014) suggest that individuals' contribution depends on whether they believe others will engage as well. Tsai and Bagozzi (2014) demonstrate that users are encouraged to contribute more in virtual communities if they accept group norms and conform to other group members.…”

Towards Sustainable Development of Online Communities in the Big Data Era: A Study of the Causes and Possible Consequence of Voting on User Reviews

“…User-generated content has many research areas and can be divided into four categories: Users' participant motivation [7,8], the influence of content [9][10][11], content mining [12,13], and content management [14][15][16]. In these studies, online reviews [17] and eWOM [18] are the most abundant themes, which focus on three areas: Consumers' acts of releasing reviews [19], consumers' perceived value of reviews [20], and consumers' shopping decisions under the effect of UGC [21].…”