research-article

Why pay?: exploring how financial incentives are used for question & answer

Authors:

Robert E. Kraut,

Scott E. HudsonAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 305 - 314

https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753373

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Electronic commerce has enabled a number of online pay-for-answer services. However, despite commercial interest, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how financial incentives support question asking and answering. Using 800 questions randomly selected from a pay-for-answer site, along with site usage statistics, we examined what factors impact askers' decisions to pay. We also explored how financial rewards affect answers, and if question pricing can help organize Q&A exchanges for archival purposes. We found that askers' decisions are two-part--whether or not to pay and how much to pay. Askers are more likely to pay when requesting facts and will pay more when questions are more difficult. On the answer side, our results support prior findings that paying more may elicit a higher number of answers and answers that are longer, but may not elicit higher quality answers (as rated by the askers). Finally, we present evidence that questions with higher rewards have higher archival value, which suggests that pricing can be used to support archival use.

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Cited By

Han DHe LZhao WZhou X(2024)What Constitutes a Helpful Health-Related Answer?Journal of Global Information Management10.4018/JGIM.34404432:1(1-35)Online publication date: 23-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.4018/JGIM.344044
Chu YQi GWang KXu F(2024)After Online Innovators Receive Performance-Contingent Material Rewards: A Study Based on an Open Innovation PlatformBehavioral Sciences10.3390/bs1408072314:8(723)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14080723
Li DGoh KHeng C(2024)Strategic Content Generation and Monetization in Financial Social MediaInformation Systems Research10.1287/isre.2022.0482Online publication date: 20-Feb-2024
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Index Terms

Why pay?: exploring how financial incentives are used for question & answer
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Web-based interaction

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2010

2690 pages

ISBN:9781605589299

DOI:10.1145/1753326

General Chair:
Elizabeth Mynatt
Georgia Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Geraldine Fitzpatrick
Vienna University of Technology
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Keith Edwards
Georgia Tech
,
Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 10 April 2010

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CHI '10

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CHI '10: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 10 - 15, 2010

Georgia, Atlanta, USA

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https://doi.org/10.4018/JGIM.344044
Chu YQi GWang KXu F(2024)After Online Innovators Receive Performance-Contingent Material Rewards: A Study Based on an Open Innovation PlatformBehavioral Sciences10.3390/bs1408072314:8(723)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14080723
Li DGoh KHeng C(2024)Strategic Content Generation and Monetization in Financial Social MediaInformation Systems Research10.1287/isre.2022.0482Online publication date: 20-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.0482
Ye JChua C(2024)Monetization for Content Generation and User Engagement on Social Media Platforms: Evidence from Paid Q&AIEEE Transactions on Engineering Management10.1109/TEM.2022.320953471(4022-4034)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2022.3209534
Liu JFan WLi XLiu X(2024)What drives users’ knowledge payment behaviour? The moderating role of knowledge expertise and social identityBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.2320213(1-21)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2024
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