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<p>User-generated content (UGC), such as health-related answers, is critical in online health communities, and financial incentives are a practical tool designed to motivate such content generation behaviors. Although the effect of financial incentives on content quality has been extensively investigated, the empirical findings remain inconsistent, suggesting a need for further study. Drawing on cognitive evaluation theory and the effects of social pressure, we develop a conceptual framework to examine the impacts of financial incentives on answer quality across three dimensions, as measured by linguistic features. We use an archival dataset from a popular online health Question-and-Answer (Q&amp;A) community and construct question-answer pairs to conduct empirical analysis. Our findings reveal that financial incentives exert different effects on the three dimensions of answer quality: they increase information value and source credibility but reduce socio-emotional support. These results contribute to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how financial incentives influence answer quality and offer an explanation for the inconsistent findings of prior research. Furthermore, our findings provide practical guidance for the design of financial incentive schemes.</p>

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Same coin, different sides: an examination of the influence of financial incentives on online health-related answer quality from a linguistic features perspective

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月8日

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  • Dongmei Han,
  • Lifeng He,
  • Zhiliang Pang,
  • Zhengze Wu,
  • Xiaohang Zhou

摘要

User-generated content (UGC), such as health-related answers, is critical in online health communities, and financial incentives are a practical tool designed to motivate such content generation behaviors. Although the effect of financial incentives on content quality has been extensively investigated, the empirical findings remain inconsistent, suggesting a need for further study. Drawing on cognitive evaluation theory and the effects of social pressure, we develop a conceptual framework to examine the impacts of financial incentives on answer quality across three dimensions, as measured by linguistic features. We use an archival dataset from a popular online health Question-and-Answer (Q&A) community and construct question-answer pairs to conduct empirical analysis. Our findings reveal that financial incentives exert different effects on the three dimensions of answer quality: they increase information value and source credibility but reduce socio-emotional support. These results contribute to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of how financial incentives influence answer quality and offer an explanation for the inconsistent findings of prior research. Furthermore, our findings provide practical guidance for the design of financial incentive schemes.