While monetary rewards have been widely used by online platforms to motivate user-generated content (UGC) contributions, users may not always demonstrate the expected behaviors. Unintended consequences of reward policies, exemplified by unchanged or reduced UGC contributions, may occur. Through two natural experiments, this study investigates the implications of providing users with an incentive structure that rewards users’ continued contribution according to the volume of UGC. Using a unique data set on two completion-contingent incentive programs from a popular online aesthetic medicine platform, we examine user responses to reward thresholds. We found that after users reach a threshold to obtain a monetary reward, they are less likely to continue contributing UGC, suggesting a minimal-effort effect. Our findings indicate that social approval from peers helps to mitigate unintended user responses to monetary reward policies. We also observed that monetary rewards primarily improve the quality and website traffic of low- to moderate-quality contributions.

中文翻译：

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激励用户生成的内容：激励阈值的意外后果

虽然在线平台广泛使用金钱奖励来激励用户生成内容 (UGC) 的贡献，但用户可能并不总是表现出预期的行为。奖励政策可能会产生意想不到的后果，例如教资会贡献不变或减少。通过两个自然实验，本研究探讨了为用户提供根据 UGC 数量奖励用户持续贡献的激励结构的影响。我们使用来自流行的在线美容医学平台的两个完成条件激励计划的独特数据集，检查用户对奖励阈值的反应。我们发现，当用户达到获得金钱奖励的门槛后，他们不太可能继续贡献 UGC，这表明存在最小努力效应。我们的研究结果表明，同行的社会认可有助于减轻用户对金钱奖励政策的意外反应。我们还观察到，金钱奖励主要提高中低质量贡献的质量和网站流量。