Social Influence on Digital Content Contribution and Consumption

In this Chapter, we aim to provide a thorough and comprehensive overview of digital content. To achieve this goal, we begin by introducing the concept of digital content and discussing its rising popularity in recent years. Various types of digital content, including text, images, audio, video, and interactive content, are discussed to give readers a comprehensive understanding of its forms. The focus then shifts to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, which have become primary channels for content contribution and consumption. Detailed information is provided on the unique features, tools, and user bases of each platform. The chapter also highlights the role of social influence in motivating individuals to produce and pay for digital content, exploring its manifestations in the digital content landscape. By providing this overview, the chapter sets the stage for further exploration of these topics in subsequent chapters, offering valuable insights into digital content and its relationship with social media platforms and social influence.

This chapter focuses on the topic of incentives for digital content contribution, exploring the effects of both monetary and non-monetary motivators on individuals’ content contribution behavior. The focus is on four specific types of digital content: reviews, crowdsourcing, creative production, and social media. By examining these content types, the chapter summarizes the motivators that can effectively incentivize their generation. The literature review reveals that while monetary incentives can be effective for some digital content, non-monetary incentives such as social recognition and intrinsic motivation may be more impactful for others. It emphasizes the need to align the type of incentive with the unique characteristics of the content and the creators’ motivations and preferences. This chapter sets the stage for the empirical analyses presented in the subsequent part of the book, which explore the social incentives and dynamics of digital content contribution, including the interplay between monetary incentives, social interaction, and content creation.

This chapter first focuses on the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing strategy, which has gained popularity among digital content platforms. We explore the concept of PWYW, identify factors that can influence PWYW behavior, and discuss the implications of this pricing strategy. The chapter also examines the social motivations that drive digital content consumption and provides a comprehensive literature review, laying the theoretical groundwork for the empirical analysis presented in Part III. The chapter aims to enhance our understanding of the factors that drive digital content consumption and explores how PWYW and other pricing strategies can be utilized to incentivize consumers to engage with digital content.

This chapter provides an overview of the live streaming industry, highlighting its three primary stakeholders: broadcasters, viewers, and platforms. The chapter introduces the industry and its context, emphasizing the unique aspects of live streaming that make it an intriguing subject for studying digital contribution and consumption behavior. The empirical analyses in this chapter focus on the economics of live streaming and address several key questions. Through a review of relevant literature and data analysis from a popular Chinese live streaming platform, the chapter investigates factors influencing broadcasters’ receipt of gifts and viewers’ motivations to send them. It also explores the impact of gifting on churn rates for both broadcasters and viewers, as well as the correlation between economic, geographic factors, and the growth of the live streaming industry. The findings offer valuable insights into the economics of live streaming in China and pose further research questions. The subsequent parts of the book build upon live streaming as an empirical context, delving deeper into social incentives, motivations, and dynamics of digital content contribution and consumption behavior, including their social aspects.

In this chapter, we conduct an empirical study using data from a live streaming platform to examine the impact of social incentives on users’ digital content contribution behavior. Our findings indicate that both social interaction and monetary rewards can increase users’ short-term frequency of content contribution and long-term retention on the platform. Furthermore, we observe that the effect of social interaction varies among users with different levels of experience on the platform.

This chapter centers on the interplay between digital content contribution, monetary incentives, and social interaction. In particular, unlike Chap. 5, which examines the impact of social incentives on content contribution, this chapter also explores the potential effects of content contribution on providers’ social and monetary gains. Through our empirical analyses, we uncover evidence that challenges the traditional labor supply theory.

In this chapter, our attention shifts to the subject of digital content consumption. This chapter explores how social interaction influences users’ content consumption behavior and examines how this effect varies based on the contributors’ level of experience. Our findings reveal a positive correlation between users’ social interaction and gift sending, particularly among contributors with high levels of content provision experience. This research underscores the significance of social influence in digital content consumption.

This chapter examines the evolution of users’ digital content consumption behavior over time. Our empirical analysis indicates a decreasing trend in users’ payment for digital content. We delve into the underlying mechanism and confirm the explanation of the substitution effect. We also explore the potential use of social influence to alleviate the decline in content payments and discover that social norms can serve as a tool to mitigate the decrease in digital content consumption over time, as users tend to increase their payments when they observe others making large payments.

This chapter provides a summary of the book’s contents along with a discussion and conclusion. The book revolves around the topic of social influence in digital content contribution and consumption. We have discussed this issue from three aspects: theories, empirical analyses, and practices. This chapter is organized according to this logic, where we sequentially discuss theoretical, empirical, and practical aspects. we provide an overview of the relevant theories, concepts, and literature covered in this book, starting with chapter 2 and concluding in chapter 4. Following that, we summarize the empirical analyses presented in chapters 5 through chapter 8. Finally, we explore the theoretical insights and practical implications of the research and how the findings can inform future studies and the development of effective strategies for online platforms and content creators.

This chapter serves as an extension to the primary content of this book by highlighting areas for future research that can build upon the topics covered in the book and expand our understanding of digital content consumption and its impact on users and the wider digital content ecosystem. In addition to offering research recommendations for digital content contribution and consumption, we have a separate section that specifically focuses on live streaming and discusses relevant topics that can be explored in this area.