Quantity vs Diversity in Online Content Production: Evidence from a Knowledge Sharing Platform

86 Pages Posted: 14 Mar 2022 Last revised: 15 Mar 2023

See all articles by Maiju Guo

Maiju Guo

Zhongnan University of Economics and Law - School of Business Administration

Jian Ni

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business

Qiaowei Shen

Peking University - Guanghua School of Management

Yan Xu

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business

Date Written: December 17, 2021

Abstract

Online question-and-answer (Q&A) platforms, as an important type of user generated contents (UGC), allow users to learn and share different perspectives of information and knowledge. Such platforms' success critically depends on the quantity and diversity of the knowledge contents. This paper utilizes a novel dataset from one of the largest Q&A platforms and studies how the amount of information and the quality of the early-stage knowledge content influence the growth of future knowledge content. We measure and characterize knowledge content's growth in quantity and diversity using an unsupervised learning method (Doc2Vec), which allows us to account for similarity across documents based on their overall meaning. Our empirical results suggest the amount of information in the early knowledge content has a negative effect on the quantity of future knowledge content but a positive effect on diversity. We also find high-quality early knowledge content drives more future knowledge quantity but has no influence on diversity. Our analysis provides important managerial implications for platform strategies.

Keywords: question-and-answer platform, quantity-diversity tradeoff, unsupervised learning, Doc2Vec

JEL Classification: D26, L86, M31

Suggested Citation

Guo, Maiju and Ni, Jian and Shen, Qiaowei and Xu, Yan, Quantity vs Diversity in Online Content Production: Evidence from a Knowledge Sharing Platform (December 17, 2021). Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Research Paper No. 22-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4046286 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4046286

Maiju Guo

Zhongnan University of Economics and Law - School of Business Administration ( email )

Wuhan, Hubei 430073
China

Jian Ni (Contact Author)

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business ( email )

1016 Pamplin Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/jiannicmu/

Qiaowei Shen

Peking University - Guanghua School of Management ( email )

Peking University
Beijing, Beijing 100871
China

Yan Xu

Virginia Tech - Pamplin College of Business ( email )

1016 Pamplin Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
United States

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