Publication Type
PhD Dissertation
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2025
Abstract
The rapid advancement of digital technology—particularly mobile and blockchain technologies—has fueled the unprecedented growth of online platforms. Among these, live commerce and blockchain-based social media have emerged as two distinct business models that profoundly shape both commercial and social aspects of people’s lives. E-commerce livestreaming integrates live video streaming with e-commerce, offering consumers real-time product information and interactive shopping experiences. Different from traditional social media platforms that rely on either voluntary contributions or ad revenue sharing to incentivize user participation, blockchain-based social media platforms often use cryptocurrency or tokens to reward users for creating and curating content. This dissertation investigates the effects of streamers’ social solicitation and sellers’ channel strategy in live commerce as well as the effects of monetary rewards in blockchain-based social media through the following three studies.
The real-time social interaction between streamers and viewers has empowered marketers with new strategies to achieve their goals. Specifically, social solicitation is a proactive social engagement tactic frequently employed by streamers to foster consumer loyalty. The first study examines the effects of social solicitation on livestreaming performance. We find that streamers’ social solicitation positively affects their social capital growth, but has a negative side effect on sales performance. Additionally, streamers with a moderate follower count benefit more from the positive effect of social solicitation on social capital growth than those with either a low or high follower count. However, the negative side effect of streamers’ social solicitation on sales performance remains consistent across all streamers.
E-commerce sellers have embraced livestreaming by either hosting livestreams themselves or partnering with third-party influencers. The second study examines the effects of both types of livestreaming on e-commerce store sales and the primary mechanisms involved. We find that the positive effect of seller-hosted livestreaming is weakened by product rating but strengthened by seller reputation. In contrast, the positive effect of influencer livestreaming is strengthened by product rating but weakened by seller reputation. These findings suggest that the provision of product information and seller endorsement are the key mechanisms through which seller-hosted and influencer livestreaming boost e-commerce store sales, respectively. We further validate these mechanisms by investigating seller follower count, the moderating role of store age, product-level spillover effects, and the impacts of store diversity and category diversity within a livestreaming session.
The monetary rewards create a direct economic incentive for user participation and engagement on blockchain-based social media platforms. The third study provides a comprehensive empirical analysis of the effects of monetary rewards on user-generated content (UGC) contributions in blockchain-based social media. We find distinct effects associated with immediate and delayed rewards. Unlike the positive effect of immediately realized monetary rewards, the delayed expected monetary rewards have an inverted U-shaped effect on UGC contributions. This finding suggests users’ income-targeting behavior, i.e., users have heuristic income targets and contribute less once their targets are reached. We further examine how social interaction and community influence affect the relationships between monetary rewards and user contributions. Our results show a synergetic effect between social approval and realized monetary rewards on UGC contributions. However, users’ power level weakens the effectiveness of realized monetary rewards in motivating UGC contributions. Additionally, recognition in monetary, social, and power dimensions all contribute to raising users’ income targets.
Degree Awarded
PhD in Information Systems
Discipline
Communication Technology and New Media | E-Commerce
Supervisor(s)
KE, Ping Fan; GUO, Zhiling
First Page
1
Last Page
161
Publisher
Singapore Management University
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
SONG, Danyang.
Socio-economic dynamics of engagement and incentivization in emerging digital platforms. (2025). 1-161.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/789
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.