Research on the Impact of Knowledge Payment Mechanism on Users'Free Knowledge Contributions:Taking Zhihu as an Example
Social Q&A communities are collaborative platforms built on the basis of co-production,where user-generated knowledge contributions form the core of community operations.Community members benefit from the knowledge content constructed through"co-production".However,with the increasing demand for personalized services and the adoption of a payment mindset,social Q&A communities are gradually transitioning into platforms that offer both free and paid services.The public can leverage the platform to share their surplus cognitive resources with others and generate economic income.The introduction of a knowledge payment mech-anism raises valuable practical questions about its potential impact on subsequent free knowledge contribution from users.Although existing research extensively discusses the motivating value of knowledge payment mechanisms,its specific effects on the free knowledge contributions of knowledge providers remain unclear.We thus propose the following research questions:1)How does the introduction of a knowledge payment mechanism affect users'free knowledge contribution behaviors in the community?2)What differences exist in this impact among different user groups?Based on rational behavior theory and planned behavior theory,and considering the spillover effects of knowledge,this paper explores the impact of knowledge payment mechanisms on the free knowledge contribution behaviors of users(specifically referring to paid knowledge providers)from both individual and community perspectives.Specifically,this paper utilizes panel data from 1492 users on the Zhihu platform over two years as research samples.Taking the launch of the"paid consultation"feature as a quasi-natural experiment,a difference-in-differences model is constructed to examine the impact of knowledge payment mechanisms on the free knowledge contribution of paid knowledge providers.Additionally,group regression is conducted based on whether paid knowledge providers are social media influencers,to explore the differences in the above impacts among different user groups.The results show that the introduction of knowledge payment mechanisms promotes two types of free knowledge contributions by users(paid knowledge providers),namely reactive knowledge contributions and proactive knowledge contributions,by affecting individual knowledge contribution intentions and the community's overall knowledge contribution capacity.Coefficient difference tests indicate that this impact varies significantly among different user groups,indicating that whether or not a user is a social media influencer moderates the impact of knowledge payment mechanisms on users'free knowledge contributions.Furthermore,based on Zhihu's classification of knowledge fields,this paper conducts further analysis using sub-sample regressions,which demonstrate that knowledge payment mechanisms have significantly promoted the overall free knowledge contributions of users in various segmented fields of knowledge.The research conclusions of this paper hold true even after a series of robustness tests.The research contributions of this paper are primarily as follows:Firstly,from the perspective of rational actors among knowledge providers,this paper explores the causal relationship between user behaviors in the paid and free sections of social Q&A commu-nities for the first time,establishing a connection between the two.Secondly,theoretical analysis of knowledge spillovers in social Q&A communities and their relationship with knowledge payment deepens the understanding and research of virtual community knowledge spillovers.Thirdly,by fully considering the influence of user heterogeneity,this paper provides an opportunity to explain the divergent findings in previous research on knowledge payment.Lastly,this study offers theoretical guidance on how to correctly understand and utilize knowledge payment to improve the overall question-response rate and answer quality of the community,con-tributing to rational thinking and exploration of the continuous development of the community and the boom in the sharing economy.
Social Q&A CommunityKnowledge Payment MechanismKnowledge ContributionDifference-in-differences Model
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