Pay to view answers: determinants of listeners' payment decisions on social Q&A platforms
ISSN: 1066-2243
Article publication date: 12 April 2022
Issue publication date: 4 July 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Paying to view others' answers is a new mode for question and answer (Q&A) platforms. The purpose is to build a model to explore the determinants of the number of listeners and further explore certain meaningful characteristics of the model in the context of different types of questions and answerers.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop an empirical model and use real panel data to test the hypothesis. Specifically, cues from the answerer and from the question elicit the listener's trust in the answerer (including direct and indirect trust) and perceived value in the question (including intrinsic and extrinsic attributes), respectively.
Findings
The authors find that cues from answerers (experience for paid Q&As and popularity for free Q&As) and questions (length, sentence structure, value and number of likes) all have positive effects on the number of listeners. The impact of answerer authentication is more significant than the popularity of free Q&As. Moreover, the length of the question matters only for subjective questions, while sentence structure matters only for objective questions. In addition, the answerer's own attributes and the behavior and feedback of others have greater impacts when the answerer is below average in popularity.
Originality/value
The authors summarize the unique features of the mode of paying to view others' answers in contrast with the traditional mode of paid Q&As. In addition, the authors focus on the characteristics of the question (including the subjectivity and the sentence structure of the question), a topic which has not been studied previously. Our research provides a reference for exploring user behavior patterns. The practical implications for knowledge platforms are also concretely described.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Miss Sihan Chen for her assistance in improving the study and editing the manuscript. Thanks to anonymous reviewers for all their valuable opinions and suggestions.
Citation
Sun, J., Li, Q., Xu, W. and Wang, M. (2022), "Pay to view answers: determinants of listeners' payment decisions on social Q&A platforms", Internet Research, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 1401-1426. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-01-2021-0056
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited