Contract Design Between Novel-writing Platform and Writers Based on Paid-for Reading
Under the online paid-for reading mode,the novel-writing platform adopts the contract of base salary plus fixed income commission(FIX contract)to allocate income for writers.The FIX contract ignores the influence of writers'writing-loss degree,that is,the loss of ability and energy that writers need to pay when writing a novel.The platform should set different commission rate to writers with different writing-loss degree to attract more influential and excellent writers with high output rate.In addition,it does not consider the heterogeneity of writers.For example,the income of some excellent writers mainly depends on a high commission rate rather than the base salary,and some writers rely on updating chapters to get the base salary,their obsession with quantity rather than quality will cause losses to the platform.VAR contracts are designed for the platform to determine commission rates and base salaries within different types of writers,which fills the literature research gap in this field.From the perspective of a novel-writing platform and based on the principal-agent model,this paper constructs an optimal contract model of variable proportion income distribution based on the agent behavior.Taking the characteristics of writers'writing behavior(effort level,writing-loss degree,writer type,etc.)into accounting,VAR contracts are proposed for the platform based on the payment data of readers.By analyzing the influence of parameters change in the model on the platform and the writer,this paper gives several suggestions on the design of contracts for different types of writers,which provides the decision-making basis for the platform to motivate writers.This paper findings:(1)the optimal commission rate of writers is determined by the ratio between the square of the variation coefficient of the number of paying readers and the initial number of paid chapters;for example,when the ratio is greater than 1,the writer's optimal commission rate is less than 0.5.(2)Under the same writing-loss degree,the platform pays a base salary above the external reservation utility level(ERUL)for writers with a large variation coefficient of the number of paying readers.(3)According to the writing-loss degree of writers and the variation coefficient of the number of paying readers,writers can be divided into four types.For opportunistic writers,they get a commission rate less than 0.5 and slightly lower than the optimal value,and a non-optimal base salary higher than ERUL but less than the threshold.For difficult writers,they get an optimal commission rate less than 0.5 and an optimal base salary higher than ERUL.For attritional writers,they get an optimal commission rate greater than 0.5 and an optimal base salary lower than ERUL.For stable writers,they get a commission rate greater than 0.5 and slightly higher than the optimal value,without providing base salary.The implication:First,analyzing the payment level of readers can help the platform determine the matching level of the commission rate.Second,the platform can determine a writer's base salary based on the paid stability of chapters.This paper shows that there is not necessarily a positive relationship between the paid stability of chapters and the writer's base salary,which provides inspiration for the platform to make base salary decisions.Third,the platform should take into account the writer's writing behavior and the paid stability of chapters to determine the composition of the contract.Writers with the same writing-loss degree may not obtain the same contract,depending on the variation coefficient of the number of paying readers.Considering the combined action of these two types of factors is the key for the platform to design contracts for writers.
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
