Motivating User-Generated Content: The 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 always demonstrate the expected behaviors. Unintended consequences of reward policies, 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 reward thresholds. We found that after users reach a threshold to obtain a monetary reward, they are less likely to continue contributing UGC, suggesting a minimal-effort effect. Our findings indicate that social approval from peers helps to mitigate unintended user responses to monetary reward policies. We also observed that monetary rewards primarily improve the quality and website traffic of low- to moderate-quality contributions.