Abstract While it is widely recognized that value perception increases when individuals engage in making physical objects, the impact of peer presence on value perception during production or consumption has not been studied. Peer production is prevalent for information products, which are the focus of the present study. Most research to date has focused on value as perceived by consumers, while consumers are increasingly involved in online processes of information production. Information, being intangible and experiential, is a unique type of good. This study places participants in the position of producing or consuming information in order to assess effects of peer group size on value perceptions. Six hundred and fifty one participants took part in 16 information consumption and production experiments. Consumers read information and producers created the same information. Consumers' willingness‐to‐pay and producers' willingness‐to‐accept payment were measured before or after peer consumption and production. Results indicate that value perception is highest when participants consume information individually, declining in small and medium‐sized groups and growing in mass consumption. Generally, post‐consumption values are higher. In production, point of measurement is cardinal. Before production, value perceived individually is lowest, however, having experienced peer production, individuals ascribe the highest value to self‐production. Value perceptions in massive groups converge.

Value perception increases when people engage in producing physical objects. However, information differs from physical objects by being intangible and easy‐to‐copy. Information as an experience good is inherently challenging to evaluate a priori; therefore, comparing value before and after different types of experience is likely to inform theory about users' preferences regarding information. Prior research mostly refers to consuming information and rarely considers the experience of producing information as a factor affecting information value. The current research compares the effect of experiencing online information through production and consumption processes on value perception. In a set of 6 experiments with 178 participants, willingness‐to‐pay by consumers and willingness‐to‐accept payment by producers are measured before and after consumption and production of information, independently and as repeated measures. In the experiments, we define and implement a framework for an information production process. The results show that the value of information is dynamic. Value perception increased after experiencing information, especially when people engaged in producing information compared to consuming it. This study offers a window toward the practical design of new digital information products.

In the context of online question‐answering services, an intermediary clarifies the user's needs by eliciting additional information. This research proposes that these elicitations will depend on the type of question. In particular, this research explores the relationship between three constructs: question types, elicitations, and the fee that is paid for the answer. These relationships are explored for a few different question typologies, including a new kind of question type that we call Identity. It is found that the kinds of clarifications that intermediaries elicit depend on the type of question in systematic ways. A practical implication is that interactive question‐answering services—whether human or automated—can be steered to focus attention on the kinds of clarification that are evidently most needed for that question type. Further, it is found that certain question types, as well as the number of elicitations, are associated with higher fees. This means that it may be possible to define a pricing structure for question‐answering services based on objective and predictable characteristics of the question, which would help to establish a rational market for this type of information service. The newly introduced Identity question type was found to be especially reliable in predicting elicitations and fees.

In the rapidly evolving technology world blogs have become a popular genre of communication. Their potential influence on decision making is the focus of the present research. Based on interplay between Social Judgment Theory and Framing Theory this study investigates whether the information delivered by technology blogs is treated differently during investment decision making than information from traditional financial newspapers in digital form, while containing information cues and text framing. Using an online experiment with a 3 × 2 design, this research compares the influence of this trio of variables on the investment decisions of 236 participants. Results indicate a complex investment decision‐making process differing according to the type of medium presented, the text framing, the information cues, and the decision maker's background.

Measuring the contribution of interorganizational systems (IOS) is challenging, and mainly based on subjective surveys. The purpose of this study is to objectively examine the effectiveness of IOS, through data from corporate financial statements. We developed a novel performance measure: an effectiveness ratio that reflects changes in average inventory level in comparison with change in annual sales. This measure reflects a certain aspect of improvement in supply chain management achieved by the evident developments of IOS, while considering external events that affected the companies. Two samples of American and Israeli companies were used for developing and empirically examining the suggested effectiveness ratio over 20 years (1993-2012). The results show considerable improvement as measured by the average effectiveness ratio of randomly selected American international companies in the cosmetics and toiletry products sector. However, the Israeli sample of food suppliers and importers, showed average marginal improvement, and major variance among the companies.

This research explores the relationship between self-presentation and perception by others as manifested explicitly through the use of tags in a people tagging system. The study provides insights relevant for the organizational context since it is based on a system implemented within IBM. We developed a detailed codebook and used it to categorize 9,506 tags assigned to a sample of taggers. Our analysis examines the use of self tags versus social tags (assigned by others) across different categories and sub-categories. While overlap exists, self tags tend to be more factual describing technology expertise, social tags augment the individual tags by adding a personal dimension.

Generating sustainable business value from information services is challenging on the web where free information and zero-switching costs are the norm. This study examines the role of free comments given in a commercial information service through the lens of the expectation-confirmation theory and continuance. Data from a question and answer web site are analyzed by structural equations modeling to test the theoretical model whereby customer satisfaction is key to continuance and is predicted largely by social interaction that takes place on the site. The model is supported by the field data retrieved from the site. The data show that people came with equal expectations, received equal service, and continued to use the system if they were satisfied with it. Satisfaction was predicted by conversation. Free activity emerges as an integral part of the service in a fee-based information market, improving satisfaction and continuance, and thereby leading to measurable outcomes for the commercial owners of the site. The findings, based on unobtrusive field data rather than self-report questionnaires, extend expectation confirmation theory by adding a social dimension to it.

Abstract The user‐centered approach to information retrieval emphasizes the importance of a user model in determining what information will be most useful to a particular user, given their context. Mediated search provides an opportunity to elaborate on this idea, as an intermediary's elicitations reveal what aspects of the user model they think are worth inquiring about. However, empirical evidence is divided over whether intermediaries actually work to develop a broadly conceived user model. Our research revisits the issue in a web research services setting, whose characteristics are expected to result in more thorough user modeling on the part of intermediaries. Our empirical study confirms that intermediaries engage in rich user modeling. While intermediaries behave differently across settings, our interpretation is that the underlying user model characteristics that intermediaries inquire about in our setting are applicable to other settings as well.

Abstract Social technologies tend to attract research on social structure or interaction. In this paper we analyze the individual use of a social technology, specifically an enterprise people‐tagging application. We focus on active participants of the system and distinguish between users who initiate activity and those who respond to activity. This distinction is situated within the preferential attachment theory in order to examine which type of participant contributes more to the process of tagging. We analyze the usage of the people‐tagging application in a snapshot representing 3 years of activity, focusing on self‐tagging compared to tagging by and of others. The main findings are: (1) People who tag themselves are the most productive contributors to the system. (2) Preferential attachment saturation is reached at 12–14 tags per user. (3) The nature of participation is more significant than the number of participants for system growth. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications.

There is general consensus that critical mass at inception ensures the sustained success of online communities. However, no clear understanding of what constitutes such a 'critical mass ' exists and too few quantitative studies have been conducted into the relationship between initial online community interaction and its longer term success to draw any conclusions. In this paper we start to address this gap through a large-scale study of the relationship between IRC chat channel survival and initial chat channel community interactions. A sample 282 chat channel births was used for survival analysis which explored the relationship between the overall user activity in each channel at its inception and the channel's life expectancy. Significant relationships were observed between online community lifespan and critical mass measures: 1) message volume, 2) user population heterogeneity and 3) production functions. The results lend support to the Critical Mass Theory of collective action.

Abstract Prior research has shown that social interaction is important for continuation of question‐and‐answer (Q&A) activity online and that it also leads to monetary rewards. The present research focuses on the link between social interaction and the value of information. Expressions of self‐presentation in the interaction between askers and answerers online are studied as antecedents for answer feedback which represents the value of the answer to the asker. This relationship is examined in a Q&A site, specifically, in Google Answers (GA). The results of content analysis performed on sets of questions and answers show that both explicit and implicit social cues are used by the site's participants; however, only implicit expressions of self‐presentation are related to the provision of social and monetary feedback, ratings, and tips. This finding highlights the importance of implicit cues in textual communication and lends support to the notion of social capital where both monetary and social forms of feedback are the result of interaction online.

Question and answer (Q&A) sites such as Yahoo! Answers are places where users ask questions and others answer them. In this paper, we investigate predictors of answer quality through a comparative, controlled field study of responses provided across several online Q&A sites. Along with several quantitative results concerning the effects of factors such as question topic and rhetorical strategy, we present two high-level messages. First, you get what you pay for in Q&A sites. Answer quality was typically higher in Google Answers (a fee-based site) than in the free sites we studied, and paying more money for an answer led to better outcomes. Second, we find that a Q&A site's community of users contributes to its success. Yahoo! Answers, a Q&A site where anybody can answer questions, outperformed sites that depend on specific individuals to answer questions, such as library reference services.

Prior work has demonstrated that the impact of individual information-processing limits can be observed in dynamics of mass interaction in asynchronous collaborative systems (Usenet newsgroups and email lists). Here we present the first evidence of such impacts on synchronous social interaction environments through the analysis of an Internet Relay Chat network. We highlight how shared public discourse in chat channels appears to be limited to 40 posters in any 20 minute interval, even as the number of channel users increases well into the hundreds. We discuss our findings in terms of understanding the relationship between online community space types and the user interaction dynamics they support.

Abstract The principal objective of this research was to understand the incentive structure in a mixed economic and social market for information. Prior research suggests that tangible incentives will crowd out intangible incentives; however, information markets invite special examination of this finding. Data representing four years of activity by 523 researchers who gave about 52,000 answers on the Google Answers Web site were collected. Analysis revealed that the main predictor for researchers' participation was the anticipation of tip (gratuity). Analysis of two researcher subgroups showed that in the case of the frequent researchers, the tip was followed by social incentives: interaction (comments) and ratings. For occasional researchers, the tip was followed by the price paid for answers and then by comments. The results suggest that a pure economic incentive serves as enticement; however, social incentives induce persistent participation by researchers and eventually lead to higher average economic gains. The market is catalyzed by social activity, not cannibalized by it, as may have been predicted by theory. This finding provides empirical evidence for “social capital” since social incentives were connected to higher economic gains. The practical implication is that a mixed incentive design is likely to generate lively information‐exchange environments.

Abstract This is an empirical, experimental investigation of the value of information, as perceived through the willingness to purchase information (WTP) and the willingness to sell it (accept payment, WTA). We examined the effects of source nature: expertise versus content, and source status: copy versus exclusive original of information on the WTA–WTP ratio. In an animated computer simulation of a business game, players could maximize their profits by making choices regarding inventory and prices. Participants were offered the chance to bid for buying or selling information regarding the weather that may affect demand. We find, as hypothesized, that the subjective value of information does indeed follow the predictions of endowment effect theory. The ratio of willingness to accept to willingness to purchase (WTA–WTP) recorded for the 294 subjects resembles the ratio common for private goods, rather than the intuitively expected unity. The WTA–WTP ratios diverged from unity more often and in a more pronounced manner for information traded in the “original” form rather than as a copy of the original, although even for copies the WTA–WTP ratio is still double. The results yield a value of about three for the WTA–WTP ratio for original information whether the source is content or expertise. Copy information received a subjective value that was significantly different (lower) than original information. The implications for both online trading and online sharing of information are discussed.