ABSTRACT

Valuation of digital content has important individual, organizational, and microeconomic implications. Yet, the existing understanding of digital content consumption is focused primarily on consumption of free content. This means, that digital content is not a source of revenue for contributors and not directly tied to the revenue or expenses of these platforms and that it is practically impossible to capture its value in national income accounts. Academic and anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that sharing of revenue from paid viewership in paid question-and-answer (Q&A) platforms is a factor that differentiates successful platforms, such as Weibo Q&A, from unsuccessful ones, such as Google Answers. Yet, the growing paid Q&A literature does not shed much light on our understanding of the drivers of revenues from paid viewership. Our study focuses on the unique revenue sharing of paid viewership among stakeholders because this feature makes paid Q&A a success and helps ensure the sustainability of the hosting social media platform. This study draws upon signaling theory to identify the drivers of the sales of paid viewership. We further draw on the cognitive view of signal attention and interpretation and the literature on social media trend and the literature on information perishability to hypothesize the differential moderating impacts of question price and content perishability. Consistent with the literature, we found the positive impacts of social media status and social endorsement on the sales of paid viewership. Extending past literature, we found an inverted-U impact of social feedback and the differential moderating effects of question price and content perishability on the sales of paid viewership.

摘要

数字内容的估值具有重要的个人、组织和微观经济意义。然而，现有对数字内容消费的理解主要集中在免费内容的消费上。这意味着，数字内容不是贡献者的收入来源，也不与这些平台的收入或支出直接相关，而且实际上不可能在国民收入账户中体现其价值。学术和轶事证据似乎表明，在付费问答 (Q&A) 平台中分享付费收视率是区分成功平台（例如微博问答）与失败平台（例如 Google Answers）的一个因素。然而，越来越多的付费问答文献并没有说明我们对付费收视收入的驱动因素的理解。我们的研究侧重于利益相关者之间付费收视率的独特收益分享，因为此功能使付费问答取得成功，并有助于确保托管社交媒体平台的可持续性。本研究利用信号理论来确定付费收视率销售的驱动因素。我们进一步利用信号注意力和解释的认知观点以及社交媒体趋势的文献和信息易腐性的文献来假设问题价格和内容易腐性的差异调节影响。与文献一致，我们发现社交媒体状态和社会认可对付费收视率的销售产生积极影响。延伸过去的文献，