Do people care equally about reputational gains and losses? We study this question by analyzing users' contribution to online knowledge repositories, with data from StackOverflow.com, a website for user-curated technical questions and answers. Based on an analysis of about 1.2 million data points (22% of all relevant activity during a six-month period on this website) focusing on consistent, regular contributors, we find that users post fewer answers after receiving upvotes as well as downvotes. This is surprising and not consistent with rational behavior, because it is in the best interest of a user to post more answers after a downvote. Interestingly, users who receive downvotes post significantly fewer answers compared to users who receive upvotes. This suggests that reputational losses (downvotes) elicit a stronger reaction in users than reputational gains (upvotes), suggesting the presence of reputational loss aversion, after controlling for alternative explanations. Overall, users' reaction is about twice as strong for reputational losses as for gains. Loss aversion as indicated by relative reaction to downvotes compared to upvotes is convex in reputation – it is stronger among users in the higher reputation segments compared to the lower and middle ranges. Our paper is novel in extending the study of loss aversion to reputational settings, and studying ex post loss aversion, as compared to ex ante loss aversion in prior literature.

人们是否同样关心声誉的得失？我们通过分析用户对在线知识库的贡献来研究这个问题，数据来自 StackOverflow.com，这是一个用户策划的技术问题和答案的网站。根据对约 120 万个数据点（本网站六个月内所有相关活动的 22%）的分析，重点关注一致的定期贡献者，我们发现用户在收到赞成票和反对票后发布的答案较少。这令人惊讶并且与理性行为不一致，因为在投票后发布更多答案符合用户的最佳利益。有趣的是，与收到赞成票的用户相比，收到反对票的用户发布的答案要少得多。这表明声誉损失（反对票）在用户中引起的反应比声誉收益（赞成票）更强，这表明在控制了替代解释后，存在声誉损失厌恶。总体而言，用户对声誉损失的反应大约是收益的两倍。与赞成票相比，对反对票的相对反应表明，损失厌恶在声誉上是凸的——与较低和中等范围的用户相比，它在较高声誉段的用户中更强。与先前文献中的事前损失厌恶相比，我们的论文在将损失厌恶研究扩展到声誉设置以及研究事后损失厌恶方面是新颖的。声誉损失的反应大约是收益的两倍。与赞成票相比，对反对票的相对反应表明，损失厌恶在声誉上是凸的——与较低和中等范围的用户相比，它在较高声誉段的用户中更强。与先前文献中的事前损失厌恶相比，我们的论文在将损失厌恶研究扩展到声誉设置以及研究事后损失厌恶方面是新颖的。声誉损失的反应大约是收益的两倍。与赞成票相比，对反对票的相对反应表明，损失厌恶在声誉上是凸的——与较低和中等范围的用户相比，它在较高声誉段的用户中更强。与先前文献中的事前损失厌恶相比，我们的论文在将损失厌恶研究扩展到声誉设置以及研究事后损失厌恶方面是新颖的。