Digital Profile Enrichment in Social Networking Sites: Evidence From a Quasi-Experiment (with Appendix)

Abstract

In the last decade, social networking sites have made notable efforts to harness the power of networks for social good. This study aims to investigate how social networking platforms could alter the design of digital profiles to influence users’ decisions related to charitable giving. Our analyses are based on a quasi-experiment on a social networking site, which enriched digital profiles by including users’ donation information from an affiliated charitable crowdfunding service. To our surprise, this profile enrichment decreased users’ donation probability - the odds of donating were reduced by 18.23% on average. However, it also increased the average gift size and revealment of the donation amount - the average gift size increased by 2.11%, and the odds of revealing the donation amount increased by 45.78%. To understand the mechanisms that underlie users’ responses to the profile enrichment, we take an integrated decision-making perspective to segment users based on their responses to the profile enrichment. The segmentation enables in-depth mechanism analyses based on social information and uncovers the nuanced impact of profile enrichment on people’s donation-related behavior in an online networking environment.

Keywords: reciprocity, susceptibility to social influence, social network, interrupted time series design

JEL Classification: H41