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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.

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.

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.

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.

Online health question-and-answer (Q&A) forums have developed a new business model whereby listeners (peer patients) can pay to read health information derived from consultations between askers (focal patients) and answerers (physicians). However, research exploring the mechanism behind peer patients' purchase decisions and the specific nature of the information driving these decisions has remained limited. This study aims to develop a theoretical model for understanding how peer patients make such decisions based on limited information, i.e. the first question displayed in each focal patient-physician interaction record, considering argument quality (interrogative form and information details) and source credibility (patient experience of focal patients), including the contingent role of urgency.

The model was tested by text mining 1,960 consultation records from a popular Chinese online health Q&A forum on the Yilu App. These records involved interactions between focal patients and physicians and were purchased by 447,718 peer patients seeking health-related information until this research.

Patient experience embedded in focal patients' questions plays a significant role in inducing peer patients to purchase previous consultation records featuring exchanges between focal patients and physicians; in particular, increasingly detailed information is associated with a reduced probability of making a purchase. When focal patients demonstrate a high level of urgency, the effect of information details is weakened, while the interrogative form is strengthened.

The originality of this study lies in its exploration of the monetization mechanism forming the trilateral relationship between askers (focal patients), answerers (physicians) and listeners (peer patients) in the business model “paying to view others' answers” in the online health Q&A forum and the moderating role of urgency in explaining the mechanism of how first questions influence peer patients' purchasing behavior.

Knowledge sharing has entered the stage of knowledge payment with the typical models of paid Q&A, live session, paid subscription, course column and community service. Numerous knowledge suppliers have begun to pour into the knowledge payment market, and users' willingness to pay for premium content has increased. However, the academic research on knowledge payment has just begun.

In this paper, the authors searched several bibliographic databases using keywords such as “knowledge payment”, “paid Q&A”, “pay for answer”, “social Q&A”, “paywall” and “online health consultation” and selected papers from aspects of research scenes, research topics, etc. Finally, a total of 116 articles were identified for combing studies.

This study found that in the early research, scholars paid attention to the definition of knowledge payment concept and the discrimination of typical models. With the continuous enrichment of research literature, the research direction has gradually been refined into three main branches from the perspective of research objects, i.e. knowledge provider, knowledge demander and knowledge payment platform.

This paper focuses on discussing and sorting out the key research issues from these three research genres. Finally, the authors found out conflicting and contradictory research results and research gaps in the existing research and then put forward the urgent research topics.