Motivating User-Generated Content : Unintended Consequences of Incentive Thresholds

While monetary rewards have been widely used by online platforms to motivate user-generated content (UGC) contributions, users may not demonstrate the expected behaviors. Unintended consequences, exemplified by unchanged or reduced UGC contributions, may occur. Through two natural experiments, this study investigates the implications of providing users with an incentive structure that rewards users’ continued contribution according to the volume of UGC. Using a unique data set on two completion-contingent incentive programs from a popular online aesthetic medicine platform, we examine user responses to the setting of reward thresholds. We find that after users reach the thresholds to obtain monetary rewards, they are less likely to continue providing UGC, exhibiting a minimal effort effect. Social approval from an audience helps mitigate these unintended implications of monetary reward policy on user behaviors. We also observe that the monetary rewards mainly improve the quality and website traffic of low to mediocre quality diaries rather than high quality diaries