GVU Brown Bag: Nicholas Lurie

Listening and Helping Strangers in Online Forums

ABSTRACT: In this talk I provide an overview of two projects that draw on queries and answers in a web forum to examine: 1) Factors affecting the perceived value of information in online forums; 2) Factors affecting contributions to online forums.

Many who use the web as a source of information often use input from strangers to make decisions or gain knowledge. In addition, only a small percentage of users actually make contributions to others. The authors propose that in such contexts the information provider’s current and past behaviors, relative to those of other information providers, influence who the information seeker thinks provides a valuable response and how valuable they judge the provider’s information to be. Further, contribution behavior is likely influenced by: (a) the role the individual occupies in the community and (b) the presence of symbolic incentives for participation. The authors track information queries, information provider responses, and objective valuation of these responses by information seekers in a web forum—where responses to information queries come from multiple information providers with whom the information seeker has not met face-to-face and has had no prior interaction. In terms of the perceived value of contributions, the authors show that a provider’s response speed, the extent to which their previous responses within the focal domain have been positively evaluated by others, and the breadth of their previous responses across different domains of knowledge affect objective judgments of information value. Importantly, these effects are moderated by the information seeker’s goal orientation; in particular, whether they want to make a decision or learn something new. In terms of contribution behavior, the authors show that whereas the existence of symbolic incentives motivates contributions by domain specialists (who have extrinsic motivations for participating), such incentives are de-motivating for socialites as they have intrinsic motives for participation.

The Listening to Strangers paper is available at http://mgt.gatech.edu/directory/faculty/lurie/pubs/weiss_lurie_macinnis_8_2008.pdf.

BIO:
Nicholas Lurie is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the College of Management at Georgia Tech and conducts research on how the information environment affects consumer and managerial decision making. He is a co-founder of the College of Management's BizLab, which brings together researchers from multiple business disciplines who study human behavior and is a member of Georgia Tech's GVU Center. He is particularly interested in factors that affect overload in information-rich environments such as the Internet; the interaction between the information environment and decision processes; and how new technologies--such as visualization, real-time feedback, map-based representation, and mobile devices--affect information search, decision processes, choice, and learning. His research has been published or is forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. His article “Decision Making in Information Rich Environments: The Role of Information Structure” won the Ferber Award for the best article in the Journal of Consumer Research based on a doctoral dissertation. He received his PhD from the Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley, his MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University, and his AB from Vassar College.