【公开学术报告】Effect of Virtual Identity Disclosure on Users’ Giving “Likes” in Community-Based Platforms: A Natural Experiment

Effect of Virtual Identity Disclosure on Users’ Giving “Likes” in

Community-Based Platforms: A Natural Experiment

Guest Speaker:     Dr. Bingjie QIAN (Harbin Institute of Technology)

Date & Time:       10:00-11:30 (Beijing Time), Tuesday, 2^nd. April 2024

Classroom:    Room 2101, Tongji Building A

ABSTRACT

An integral component of user participation in community-based platforms is giving “likes” to content posted by others. At the same time, online social participation is distinctively different from offline social participation in that online users are often allowed to create a virtual identity and participate anonymously. The objective of this study is to identify the motivations behind users’ giving “likes” when their virtual identity (i.e., username) is hidden or shown. Specifically, we leverage a natural experiment to examine the effect of virtual identity disclosure on users’ “liking” behavior. Our identification strategy relies on an exogenous policy change in an online community-based platform, where likers’ username was not visible before the change but publicly shown after the change. Our results show that users gave fewer “likes” after the policy change, which is consistent with their protective self-presentation motivation. The analyses of the content and user characteristics provide additional support for the dominating role of protective self-presentation motivation. This paper provides insights into user behavior in online communities and has practical implications for both platforms and content creators.

Keywords: community-based platform, content consumption, content generation, identity disclosure, protective self-presentation