Listening and Helping Strangers in Online Forums

ABSTRACT: In this talk I provide an overview of two projects that draw
on queries and answers in a web forum to examine: 1) Factors affecting
the perceived value of information in online forums; 2) Factors
affecting contributions to online forums.

Many who use the web as a source of information often use input from
strangers to make decisions or gain knowledge. In addition, only a
small percentage of users actually make contributions to others. The
authors propose that in such contexts the information provider’s
current and past behaviors, relative to those of other information
providers, influence who the information seeker thinks provides a
valuable response and how valuable they judge the provider’s
information to be. Further, contribution behavior is likely influenced
by: (a) the role the individual occupies in the community and (b) the
presence of symbolic incentives for participation. The authors track
information queries, information provider responses, and objective
valuation of these responses by information seekers in a web
forum—where responses to information queries come from multiple
information providers with whom the information seeker has not met
face-to-face and has had no prior interaction. In terms of the
perceived value of contributions, the authors show that a provider’s
response speed, the extent to which their previous responses within the
focal domain have been positively evaluated by others, and the breadth
of their previous responses across different domains of knowledge
affect objective judgments of information value. Importantly, these
effects are moderated by the information seeker’s goal orientation; in
particular, whether they want to make a decision or learn something
new. In terms of contribution behavior, the authors show that whereas
the existence of symbolic incentives motivates contributions by domain
specialists (who have extrinsic motivations for participating), such
incentives are de-motivating for socialites as they have intrinsic
motives for participation.

The Listening to Strangers paper is available at
http://mgt.gatech.edu/directory/faculty/lurie/pubs/weiss_lurie_macinnis_8_2008.pdf.

BIO: Nicholas Lurie is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the College of
Management at Georgia Tech and conducts research on how the information
environment affects consumer and managerial decision making. He is a
co-founder of the College of Management's BizLab, which brings together
researchers from multiple business disciplines who study human behavior
and is a member of Georgia Tech's GVU Center. He is particularly
interested in factors that affect overload in information-rich
environments such as the Internet; the interaction between the
information environment and decision processes; and how new
technologies--such as visualization, real-time feedback, map-based
representation, and mobile devices--affect information search, decision
processes, choice, and learning. His research has been published or is
forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing,
Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal
of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Public Policy and
Marketing. His article “Decision Making in Information Rich
Environments: The Role of Information Structure” won the Ferber Award
for the best article in the Journal of Consumer Research based on a
doctoral dissertation. He received his PhD from the Haas School at the
University of California at Berkeley, his MBA from the Kellogg School
at Northwestern University, and his AB from Vassar College.