Today’s consumers heavily rely on online peer reviews to guide their purchase decisions. Yet, review platforms and businesses alike are struggling with a shortage of online reviews and declining review length. In response, many businesses have turned to offering incentives, such as discounts or even direct payments, in exchange for (often positive) reviews ... Read More

The under-provision of online reviews is a major challenge faced by review platforms and businesses alike. In response, many businesses have begun to actively solicit reviews from their consumers. But is this approach beneficial? In examining TripAdvisor’s launch of a review collection program, we found that while hotel participation in review solicitation ... Read More

To encourage more and higher-quality content, some knowledge platforms have started to pay contributors. It is unclear, however, whether and how such monetary incentives affect users’ contribution to non-paid (“free”) knowledge activities. Answering this question is important because consumers benefit from both paid and non-paid knowledge. We study the ... Read More

In May 2016, the Chinese question-and-answer platform Zhihu launched Zhihu Live, allowing contributors to hold live talks and collect entrance fees from participants. While contributing to the knowledge available on the platform, how did this new payment-based approach affect users’ unpaid-for contributions? Using evidence generated by this “natural ... Read More

Crowdfunding—collecting small donations from a large number of investors—is an increasingly popular way of raising capital, particularly for creative projects. With the rise of crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, entrepreneurs and small businesses have secured billions of dollars to develop their innovative ideas. However, we still know ... Read More

Online hiring is often assumed to reduce biases based on gender, age or race because such information is often not explicitly revealed by job applicants. But a new study shows that biases are alive and kicking thanks to subtle cues from applicants’ names and photos. Jason Chan and Jing Wang looked at gender bias, which is well-documented offline to be ... Read More

Online labor marketplaces facilitate the efficient matching of employers and workers across geographical boundaries. This online phenomenon holds important social and economic implications. In this talk, Prof Jing WANG will explore the impact of gender-based stereotypes on hiring outcome in online labor marketplaces and uncover the underlying gender-specific ... Read More