Willing To Pay 2

Information Processing and Management 57 (2020) 102241
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Information Processing and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/infoproman
Exploring payment behavior for live courses in social Q&A

T
communities: An information foraging perspective
Xiao Shi, Xiabing Zheng , Feng Yang
⁎
School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, No.96 Jinzhai Road, Baohe District, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
Keywords: People are increasingly searching for information in social Q&A communities, especially through
Social Q&A community a new form of paid knowledge product, namely, live course. Such course provides a way for users
Payment behavior to interact synchronously with content creators online. However, how this knowledge product is
Live course accepted and why users pay for it deserve attention from researchers. In this study, a research
Systematic cues
model was developed based on information foraging theory (IFT) and social information foraging
Heuristic cues
Social endorsement
(SIF) theory to analyze users’ information processing and evaluation when making payment
decisions. Our research model was validated by collecting subjective and objective data from a
Chinese social Q&A community that has been successful in offering live course services. We found
that perceived quality of free content, perceived credibility of content creators, and perceived
quantity of participants positively influence users’ willingness to pay, and thus, positively affects
users’ payment behavior. Unexpectedly, social endorsement negatively moderates the relation-
ship between willingness to pay and payment behavior. This study enhances the theoretical
understanding of the drivers of users’ payment for live courses in social Q&A communities. For IS
practice, our findings provide unique insights for community managers and content creators on
how to operate paid knowledge products appropriately and effectively.
1. Introduction
The relative variety of means to convey information such as digital text, voice and video, coupled with the ubiquity of content
consumption technologies such as notebook computers and mobile phones (Heinze & Matt, 2018; Pavlou, 2003), have encouraged
content creators to increasingly rely on electronic offerings, thereby increasing information transfer efficiency and gaining benefits
easily. Correspondingly, social Q&A communities, with the features containing knowledge community (exchanging knowledge
through questioning-and-answering) and social community (gathering and interacting) (Lou, Fang, Lim, & Peng, 2013; Oh, Oh, &
Shah, 2008), are generally accepted and adopted by users recently. Examples of such community include Quora, Yahoo! Answers, and
Stack Overflow in the United States, Knowledge-iN in Korea, and Baidu Knows, Himalaya FM, Zhihu in China. The report showed that
Quora has 300 million monthly users in 2019 (Recode, 2019). To manage the community, Quora makes profits mainly from ad-
vertisements (Recode, 2019). Compared with Quora, Zhihu in China obtains part of the revenue by providing a paid knowledge
product, which is Zhihu Live. Data from the Chinese Internet Consulting Data Center showed that the number of users who paid for
knowledge reached 16.72 million in December 2018 (Jiguang 2019). In addition, the profit of knowledge paid industries amounted to
approximately 4.9 billion RMB in 2017, which was expected to soar to 23.5 billion RMB in 2020 (iResearch, 2018). Apparently, users
have largely participated in social Q&A communities and switched to the online consumption of content. Users are becoming
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: shixiao@mail.ustc.edu.cn (X. Shi), is.xzheng@gmail.com (X. Zheng), fengyang@ustc.edu.cn (F. Yang).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102241
Received 10 October 2019; Received in revised form 20 January 2020; Accepted 11 March 2020
Available online 29 March 2020
0306-4573/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
X. Shi, et al. Information Processing and Management 57 (2020) 102241
gradually aware of the value of knowledge or content in social Q&A communities and pay for obtaining knowledge. Therefore,
managing the knowledge content and boosting sales of paid knowledge products raise the need for content creators and community
managers to rethink and take further measures.
Taking Zhihu as an example, when users surf in Zhihu community, they can search information and initiate discussions with other
users or content creators in the community, which generates a large amount of free content. Built upon Zhihu community, Zhihu Live
offers usable and functional live courses for users to obtain information and connect with content creators. During the live courses,
content creators talk about their prepared content and interact with participants in the way of Q&A through voice chat, while
participants can look through the digital texts and listen to content creators’ audio commentary online. Similar to pre-ordering, a live
course will be on sale a few days before the course starts. The brief introduction about content creators and the quantity of parti-
cipants in the live courses are also presented clearly on the platform. After the live course, participants usually would leave review or
other message (i.e., ratings) about their participated courses in the community. Their endorsement might also influence other users’
payment behavior.
This study aims to explore the motivators of users’ payment behavior in social Q&A communities, where paid courses and free
knowledge exchange services coexist. To illustrate the above payment behavior, we draw on information foraging theory (IFT) and
social information foraging (SIF) theory to describe how users follow the scent-based cues and environmental factor (Pirolli, 2009;
Pirolli & Card, 1999). Before paying for a live course, users will forage information and rely on various scent-based cues, such as the
quality of free content in the community and the information related to the content creators, the live courses, and the quantity of
participants. These scent-based cues help users to assess their willingness to pay. Based on heuristic-systematic model (HSM), these
cues can be distinguished into heuristic cues and systematic cues (Trumbo, 2002) when users process and evaluate information. Given
that social Q&A communities serve for a social environment, users’ social behavior would be affected by online social information
(Pirolli, 2009). Other users’ endorsement can play a role in affecting users’ actual payment behavior. Accordingly, the research
questions guiding this study are:
Q1: What are the scent-based cues that motivate users to pay for live courses in social Q&A communities?
Q2: How systematic cue (content quality) and heuristic cues (credibility and likeability of content creators, and quantity of participants)
affect users’ willingness to pay in social Q&A communities?
Q3: How social endorsement moderates the effect of willingness to pay on payment behavior?
Our research was validated by collecting both subjective responses and objective behavioral data about live courses from 178
Zhihu users. The objective data for our dependency variable was collected several months after the subjective data for the ante-
cedents to better test for causality. The empirical results showed that perceived quality of free content, perceived credibility of
content creators, and perceived quantity of participants positively influence users’ willingness to pay, and thus, positively affects
users’ payment behavior. And social endorsement negatively moderates the relationship between willingness to pay and payment
behavior.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Social Q&A communities and live courses
Q&A communities are online knowledge-sharing communities that organize knowledge exchange in the form of asking and
answering questions (Lou, Fang, Lim, & Peng, 2013). Prior research has defined social Q&A communities as web-based service
platforms that allow people to seek information by asking questions and receiving answers from others (Oh, Oh, & Shah, 2008). Social
Q&A enables users to post questions, comments, and discussions with others (Fu & Oh, 2019). On the basis of existing literature, we
define the social Q&A community as a combination of Q&A community (exchanging information through Q&A) and social com-
munity (interacting with content creators within the community), where users can obtain information from content creators by
asking and interacting.
According to the research from Shah, Oh, and Oh (2009) and Jeng, DesAutels, He, and Li (2017), we classified recent studies on
social Q&A communities into two categories: content-based and user-based. Content oriented studies focused on the types of ques-
tions or the characteristics of answers on social Q&A sites, such as, content quality (Neshati, 2017), question informativeness and
attractiveness (Liu & Jansen, 2018), and answer quality (Fu & Oh, 2019). To improve the management of Q&A process in the
community, Neshati (2017) proposed a unified classification framework to detect high-quality questions and associated answers. Liu
and Jansen (2018) discovered that questions with more unique words and appreciation emojis are more probable to receive re-
sponses. In addition, Fu and Oh (2019) investigated a list of criteria that could be used to assess answer quality, which includes
accuracy, completeness, solution feasibility, and so on.
Another stream of related literature evolves around user participations and motivations. For example, Oh (2012) examined users’
motivations to share personal experiences and knowledge in social Q&A communities and found that altruism is the most influential
motivator. Zhao, Detlor, and Connelly (2016) showed that users’ enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy will
motivate them to share knowledge in the social Q&A communities. In such communities, there exists a huge amount of information
and knowledge involving questions, answers, and discussions. Sun, Wang, Shen, and Zhang (2019) postulated that users’ information
processing routes and information adoption intention might be different when facing different types of information—search versus
experience information. They found that the effect of information usefulness on information adoption is stronger for experience
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information than for search information.

Above mentioned literature is related to public information and knowledge without any charge. Live courses, as the new type of
knowledge products in the social Q&A communities, monetize online knowledge and then make profits (Lee, Kim, Yi, Sung, & Gerla,
2013; Zhang, Zhang, & Zhang, 2019). With the emergence of paid knowledge products, researchers studied users’ payment behavior
on fee-based content and information in the social Q&A communities. For instance, Zhao, Peng, Liu, Song, and Hansen (2019) ex-
plored users’ pay intention by analyzing the tradeoff between perceived benefits (i.e., social support, entertainment) and perceived
costs (i.e., financial cost) in social Q&A communities. Moreover, Zhang, Zhang, and Zhang (2019) integrated users’ participation
behavior related to both free and paid content and found that historical satisfaction will be less positively influential on customer
satisfaction for expert users than for novice users.
Previous studies have explored different social Q&A communities, such as Stack Overflow (Fu & Oh, 2019; Neshati, 2017) and
Research Gate Q&A (Jeng, DesAutels, He, & Li, 2017) in US, Baidu Knows (Lou, Fang, Lim, & Peng, 2013) and Zhihu (Sun, Wang,
Shen, & Zhang, 2019; Zhang, Zhang, & Zhang, 2019) in China. In this study, we select Zhihu as the object to illustrate the feature of
live courses in this social Q&A community. Due to the unique attributes of the paid product and its lack of study till now, we are
motivated to understand users’ payment behavior on live courses in the social Q&A community.
2.2. Scent-based cues
2.2.1. Information foraging theory

IFT explains the theory behind the adaptive relationships between information foragers and information providers, which means
that individuals search for information in a given environment (Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card, 1999). Users attempt to maximize the
rate of obtaining valuable information and minimize the cost of finding and understanding the gathered information (Pirolli & Card,
1999). Recently, IFT has been advanced in various information searching contexts, such as mobile web (Adipat, Zhang, & Zhou,
2011), health-related online sites (Nan, Sharman, Rao, & Upadhyaya, 2014), and product-search websites (Li, Tan, Wei, & Wang,
2017). In terms of IFT, users’ evaluation of information depends on the context of information provision (Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card,
1999). Social Q&A communities serve as online information provision platforms, where users search for information and knowledge,
and even pay for gaining knowledge (i.e., live course). To understand users’ information searching and assessing process, we deem
that IFT can be also used within such specific context and provide an insight for investigating users’ decision-making process of
paying for live courses.
During food-foraging activities, information scent was developed within IFT by observing how predators search for food. Pirolli
and Card (1999) applied this concept to information searching on the web and explained that information scent helps foragers’
evaluation of proximal, imperfect, informational cues. Scent-based information thus refers to cues that help an information forager
determine the potential value of specific information within a particular context (McCart, Padmanabhan, & Berndt, 2013;
Pirolli, 2003; Pirolli & Card, 1999). For example, users who are looking for needed knowledge would rely on certain cues to evaluate
the value of knowledge, such as textual or visual representations of content, keywords, and website attributes (Li, Tan, Wei, & Wang,
2017). McCart, Padmanabhan, and Berndt (2013) regarded information scents as the cues that obtained from the text and images
associated with the distal content. To attract and retain more users, website managers try to maximize information scents, such as
visual, audio, and semantic cues (Moody & Galletta, 2015). Users in social Q&A communities, as information foragers, devote time
and energy in processing multiple information cues to approach and evaluate the value of live courses. To measure the value of live
courses, users can rely on existed scent-based information cues in the social Q&A communities, such as content quality, credibility of
content creators, and the number of course participants.
2.2.2. Heuristic-systematic model and scent-based cues

Research in IFT suggests that users may combine all scent-based cues when browsing information (Pirolli & Card, 1995). Under
the context of social Q&A communities, the informational environment and knowledge products of live courses urge users to process
visible information. To clarify each information cue from live courses and social Q&A communities, we utilize HSM to distinguish
these information scents. HSM assumes that individuals process obtained information through two distinct ways (i.e., heuristic
processing and systematic processing), which requires varying degrees of cognitive effort (Trumbo, 2002). Systematic processing
refers to people considering all relevant pieces of information, elaborating on these pieces of information, and forming a judgment
based on these elaborations (Todorov, Chaiken, & Henderson, 2002). Eagly & Chaiken, 1993 defined heuristic processing as a limited
mode of information processing that requires less cognitive effort and fewer cognitive resources.
According to HSM, systematic cues are typically content-related cues, which indicates that users need to pay sufficient cognitive
effort when scrutinizing information and assessing validity (Chaiken, 1980). Previous studies regarded argument quality as a sys-
tematic processing cue (Sun, Wang, Shen, & Zhang, 2019; Watts & Zhang, 2008; Zhang, Zhao, Cheung, & Lee, 2014), which refers to
the strength or plausibility of persuasive argumentation (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). In the context of social Q&A communities, the
argument quality can be replaced by perceived quality of free content, which represents the completeness, accuracy, format, and
currency of online public content (Setia, Setia, Venkatesh, & Joglekar, 2013). Heuristic cues are mainly related to information source
(Chaiken, 1980), which in this study are related to content creators. There are three aspects related to heuristic cues: availability,
accessibility, and applicability of knowledge (Chen & Chaiken, 1999). Applying these aspects to social Q&A communities, the
statements of the content creators’ can be trusted and liked when users personally know them or have gained experiences from the
content creators (availability). Furthermore, when users make decisions, they will perceive the content creators’ suggestion as helpful
if they carefully consider their advice (accessibility). Finally, if content creators haven't previously provided any related or useful
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knowledge, then users will not adopt the information from content creators (applicability). Thus, perceived credibility and likeability
of content creators in this study are regarded as heuristic cues. In addition, the popularity and prevalence of live courses in social
Q&A communities need to be considered. Users can clearly notice the number of participants in live courses, which can be viewed as a
reflection of popularity. We also treat the perceived quantity of participants as one of the heuristic cues in this study.
2.3. Social information foraging theory
As an extension of IFT in social context, SIF theory presents the view that searching information can be performed not only by a
solitary user, but also by a collective group (Pirolli, 2009). It states that a group of people can discover knowledge more efficiently
and thoroughly compared with a solitary user (Giraldeau & Caraco, 2000; Pirolli, 2009). Individuals frequently seek aid from sur-
roundings due to constraints on their ability to process information (Simon, 1955). Specifically, SIF theory proposes that individuals
have their own perspectives and sensitivity to information; hence, an individual mind making sense all information is unlikely.
Thereby, when individuals collect and gather, others’ experiences and understandings can be hints that indicate the value of the
product. For example, other users’ comment regarding products can be a strong signal of product quality (Cui, Lui, & Guo, 2012).
SIF theory indicates that a handful of well-experienced individuals in the community can be effective for social foraging
(Pirolli, 2009; Yi, Jiang, & Benbasat, 2017). Online users have been observed to typically judge the quality of source based on social
endorsement (McCracken, 1989), because people tend to perceive the quality of a live course as high if others perceive its usefulness.
From these points of view, we use social endorsement as a vital factor of social foraging mechanism in this study. Lim (2013) defined
social endorsement as peers’ or friends’ acceptance behavior. Observing others’ acceptance of live courses in social Q&A communities
can influence users’ intention to pay for live courses. Social endorsing is found to be an effective way to diffuse information (Li, Liou,
& Ni, 2019), which can be seen as an environmental cue for users. Such environmental cue would influence users’ perception and
behavior. When others who have participated in the live courses like these paid knowledge, the individual could be influenced by
others and tent to pay for gaining the information embedded in live courses.
The unique attributes of this new form of knowledge product (live courses) and the lack of study to date motivate us to develop
and empirically test a theoretical model of paying for live courses through social Q&A communities. Toward this goal, we build on
IFT and SIF theory to explain how users process information and assess social information as influenced by other users in social Q&A
communities.
3. Research model and hypotheses
As per the review of theoretical background in the previous section, we propose the research model as shown in Fig. 1. To explain
individuals’ payment behavior for live courses in social Q&A communities, we consider systematic and heuristic information cues
from the IFT perspective. The dependent variable (DV) is assessed through an objective measure, i.e., frequency of payment in a given
time period. The frequency of payment for live courses is a vital outcome for community managers and content creators, given that
payment directly affects course revenue. User behavior can be explained from two paths: (1) people perform behaviors based on
careful search and scrutinize of the existed information as per information foraging and processing perspective, which aligns with the
views of IFT (Pirolli & Card, 1999) and HSM (Trumbo, 2002); and (2) people perform behaviors based on others’ attitudes and
behavior in light of the SIF perspective (Pirolli, 2009).
Fig. 1. Research model.
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3.1. Scent-based information of systematic cue: content quality
IFT provides a theory to understand how an individual searches for information in a given context and posits that users’ search
persists if the information is relevant and useful (Pirolli, 2007; Pirolli & Card, 1999). During the information searching process, scent-
based cues help individuals to seek information and knowledge (Moody & Galletta, 2015; Pirolli, 2003). Within the social Q&A
communities, users can approach free community content and assess the quality of such content before searching live courses. We
propose that perceived quality of free content is an important cue for users to evaluate the live courses. According to Wixom & Todd,
2005, information quality was defined as the completeness, accuracy, format, and currency of information produced by technologies.
On the basis of users’ experience in online social Q&A communities, completeness refers to the users’ perception that the content
creators have provided all necessary information; accuracy denotes the degree of correctness of information; format represents the
users’ perception that information is well-presented by the community; and lastly, currency means the degree to which information is
up-to-date.
Content that is current, accurate, complete, and well formatted reflects trustful and valuable information (Rieh, 2002). From the
perspective of HSM, content quality is similar to argument quality, which is defined as the strength or plausibility of persuasive
argumentation (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). In this study, the processing of perceived quality of free content requires huge amount of
cognitive efforts, namely, systematic processing. Low-quality information may increase users’ search and information-processing
costs (Gu, Konana, Rajagopalan, & Chen, 2007). Thus, finding valuable information among outdated and incomplete posts is difficult
for users. Accordingly, high-quality content will help users to understand the topic and reach a decision in adopting information
(Watts & Zhang, 2008). This notion indicates that high-quality content is plausible, reliable, and trustful (Cheng, Fu, & de Vreede,
2017). Information quality has been found to influence various outcomes, such as IS adoption (Saeed & Abdinnour-Helm, 2008),
knowledge sharing (Durcikova & Gray, 2009), and purchase intention (Park, Lee, & Han, 2007). Park, Lee, and Han (2007) argued
that high-quality content related to products will affect users’ purchasing intention. Moreover, Zhao, Peng, Liu, Song, and
Hansen (2019) found that perceived value of knowledge services will positively influence users’ pay intention in the social Q&A
communities. When users perceive that the free content within the social Q&A community is of high quality, they will regard the paid
knowledge products as valuable information as well and tend to pay for these products. Consistent with this stream of research, we
infer that if users consider the free content to be of high-quality, then they tend to obtain more information from communities, such
as through live courses, which require users to pay for participation. With the valuable content in the free public aspect of com-
munities, a user may be willing to pay for content in live courses. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:
H1: Perceived quality of free content has a positive effect on willingness to pay.
3.2. Scent-based information of heuristic cues: credibility, likeability, participants’ quantity
Heuristic information processing involves the use of relatively general rules based on individuals’ experiences and observations
Chaiken, (1980). Although we assess the influence of information related to live courses in social Q&A communities, we also assume
that heuristic cues can play an important role in affecting users’ willingness to pay. This assumption is consistent with the additivity
effect of HSM, which asserts that systematic processing of information content and heuristic processing of non-content cues can
produce independent effects on judgmental decision (Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989). Source credibility and source likeability
have been studied as crucial heuristic cues in both offline context (Chaiken, 1980) and online context (De Keyzer, Dens, & De
Pelsmacker, 2019; Ferran & Watts, 2008; Zhang, Zhao, Cheung, & Lee, 2014). Recent research also shows that as an effective decision
rule, the quantity of reviews, which represents the volume of reviews and popularity of corresponding products (Zhang, Zhao,
Cheung, & Lee, 2014), helps users decide quickly (Park & Lee, 2008; Park, Lee, & Han, 2007). In view of the characteristics of live
courses in social Q&A communities, content creators are the information sources of live courses. Before payment, users can view the
number of participants who have paid for the live courses and prepare to engage in the courses. Therefore, in this study, heuristic cues
pertain to perceived credibility of content creators, perceived likeability of content creators, and perceived quantity of participants.
In accordance with Chaiken (1980), we define perceived credibility of content creators as users’ overall perception concerning the
credibility of information provided by content creators. Perceived credibility embraces the perceived competence and trustworthiness
of information sources (Sussman & Siegal, 2003). Prior research shows that people commonly accept experts’ statements as heuristic
cues and consider the statements trustful and useful (Chen and Chaiken, 1999); (Li, Huang, Tan, & Wei, 2013); (Sussman & Siegal,
2003). This notion implies that the heuristic cue of perceived credibility of content creators is evaluated based on users’ existing
impression. (Aghakhani, Karimi, & Salehan, 2018) found that source credibility positively influences users’ judgments (i.e., whether
the content is wise, beneficial, or valuable). Content creators in social Q&A communities can build their personal profile to describe
themselves. Their answers, thoughts and articles are also presented in their personal pages. By referring to this information, users can
infer the extent of the competence and trustworthiness of content creators. Sources perceived as expertise and trustworthiness in a
certain matter (e.g., based on answers or discussion about a specific topic) will be considered useful (Li, Huang, Tan, & Wei, 2013)
and credible (Cheung, Luo, Sia, & Chen, 2009). (Giffin, 1967) suggested that a competent, truthful and credible content creator could
engender users’ trusting beliefs in content creators. Then, trust in content creators can stimulate users’ purchase intention
(Yoon, 2002). Users who receive free public information from others likely select the corresponding products (Senecal & Nantel,
2004). Similarly, the perceived credibility of content creators exerts a significant influence on users’ online information adoption
behavior (Watts & Zhang, 2008). Following this perspective, we posit that the perceived credibility of content creators is a heuristic
cue in making payment decisions. Furthermore, it is an important cue that forms users’ willingness to pay. Users are more willing to
pay for live courses if they deem the content creator credible. Accordingly, we hypothesize the following:
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H2: Perceived credibility of content creators has a positive effect on willingness to pay.
Heuristic processing is activated by cues, such as sender characteristics (Chaiken, 1980). Source likeability, as a cue of in-
formation source, is defined as “the extent to which an information recipient perceives an information source as likeable”
(Chaiken, 1980; Ferran & Watts, 2008). Users are more receptive to communicators (content creators) that derive from likeable
sources. If a communicator is evaluated to be more likeable compared with another communicator, then the former will be rated as
more competent than the latter (Chaiken, 1980; Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991). By employing a simple decision rule
that is “people generally agree with people they like” perceived likeability of content creators may directly influence users’ will-
ingness to accept information from content creators’ (Chaiken, 1980). From free content to live courses (at a price), users are more
willing to pay live courses if they like the content creator. Fans are willing to devote time to review information from and purchase
goods endorsed by celebrities they like (Stever, 2011). Users in social Q&A communities may favor content creators over others.
When the preferred content creators set up live courses in the community, users are more willing to purchase their courses, although
live courses require a certain amount of money. Hence, we present the following hypothesis:
H3: Perceived likeability of content creators has a positive effect on willingness to pay.
We denote the perceived quantity of participants as the third heuristic information cue, which can be inferred from two per-
spectives. On the one hand, the quantity of information refers to the degree to which the amount of available information is sufficient
(Kim, Lee, Shin, & Yang, 2017). On the other hand, information on participants’ payment behavior can be regarded as word-of-mouth
information, which is defined as users’ perceptions regarding the volumes of behavior-related information and popularity of cor-
responding products (Park, Lee, & Han, 2007; Zhang, Zhao, Cheung, & Lee, 2014). Social Q&A communities have provided the
number of participants’ quantity concerning live courses; however, such information cannot manifest whether the quantity is suf-
ficient. Thus, we focus on the second perspective and define the perceived quantity of participants as the perception of the number of
participants in live courses and degree of popularity of live courses. Previous research shows that widely downloaded online products
are more likely to be downloaded by other new adopters (Duan, Gu, & Whinston, 2009). We can infer that the large volume of
participants exerts a vital influence on other users’ payment intention and behavior. Moreover, the large volume of participants is one
of the distinct features that directly reveals the degree of engagement (Gagné, 2003). Driven by the herd effect, users tend to follow
others’ behavior of paying for live courses. Because of these concerns, we expect that if users perceive a large quantity of participants
for a given live course, then users are more likely to pay for it. This reasoning informs the following hypothesis:
H4: Perceived quantity of participants has a positive effect on willingness to pay.
3.3. Payment for live courses: willingness to pay and payment behavior
Several studies define willingness to pay as the maximum amount of money a customer is willing to spend for a product or a
service (Cameron & James, 1987; Krishna, 1991). However, this definition is more related to the product itself (price) rather than the
user himself. In this study, we pay attention to users’ attitudinal reflection and behavioral outcome. Hence, we define willingness to
pay as the intention and probability of payment behavior (Dodds, Monroe, & Grewal, 1991; Homburg, Totzek, & Krämer, 2014).
Social psychology and IS research have identified behavioral intention as an immediate and important antecedent of actual behavior
(Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003). Furthermore, on the basis of the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), personal
intention is deemed as a function of attitude toward the action. Attitudinal factor can be viewed as a major determinant of behavior
(Ajzen, 1991). When browsing live courses, users evaluate the content creators and other information and form the possibility of
payment. Such intention of payment can be regarded as a prominent attitudinal signal, which will strongly drive payment behavior.
Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
H5: Willingness to pay has a positive effect on payment behavior.
3.4. Social foraging process: social endorsement
SIF theory suggests that collective information sharing generates greater information diversity, which expands the search range of
individual foragers (Chi, 2009). Social foraging process involves an individual and surrounding individuals. An individual is influ-
enced by the information from the attitude or behavior of other individuals. Then, the person is inclined to perform similar or the
same attitude or behavior. Social Q&A communities own the feature of social community, which can gather people together and
make them interact with each other (Lou, Fang, Lim, & Peng, 2013; Oh, Oh, & Shah, 2008). In a social community setting, individuals
are often affected by others who are close to them. To illustrate the effect of social information in social Q&A communities, we
explore social endorsement as an SIF cue.
Social endorsement, which is adapted from peer endorsement (Lim, 2013), is defined as the surrounding people's acceptance of
live courses in social Q&A communities. Self (1996) reported that social endorsement is beneficial to assess the credibility of content.
It implies that the endorsed evaluation shows the value and the credibility of live courses in the social Q&A community context.
Metzger, Flanagin, and Medders (2010) found that several participants often browse comments to direct their purchase decisions.
When users lack personal experience, comments from their reliable friends can convey relevant and positive information about
products and sellers’ services (Lin, Luo, Cheng, & Li, 2019). Li, Liou, and Ni (2019) stated that social endorsing was an important
influential factor, which would influence consumers’ behavior. For example, the behavior of clicking “likes” indicates others’ en-
dorsement of an object, which was found to affect the latter users’ clicking behavior (Xu, Yao, & Teo, 2019). Users are inclined to pay
for the courses if many others think live courses are useful and accurate. Getting information from experienced users would expand
an individual's information searching space and offer hints about the utility of the associated information (Yi, Jiang, & Benbasat,
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2017). In a socially endorsed environment, users are more likely to pay compared with a less accepted context. Thus, we assume that
social endorsement may positively moderates the influence of other users’ willingness to pay on users’ payment for live courses and
propose the following hypothesis:
H6: Social endorsement positively moderates the relationship between users’ willingness to pay and payment behavior.
4. Research methodology
To test our research model and hypotheses, we conducted a longitudinal field study where data on user payment for online
discussions was collected from Zhihu Live on two occasions with an interval of nine months. A two-stage longitudinal data collection
method, which was designed with primary and secondary data, provided evidence for strong internal validity (Kim, Kankanhalli, &
Lee, 2018; Ou, Pavlou, & Davison, 2014; Straub, Boudreau, & Gefen, 2004). According to previous research, Ou, Pavlou, and Davison
(2014) and Kim, Kankanhalli, and Lee (2018) collected data on users’ subjective responses and behavioral data at different time
points. Therefore, we developed an online survey for collecting the subjective perceptions of independent variables (IVs) and control
variables (CVs) in the research model nine months before the collection of objective data for the DV and payment amount of the live
courses. A nine-month time lag between the IVs and DVs is commonly used in the e-healthcare system (Venkatesh, Zhang, & Sykes,
2011) and other information systems research (Deng & Chi, 2012). We selected Zhihu as the social Q&A community for our data
source because it successfully provides a unique form of live course, a paid knowledge product named Zhihu Live. Zhihu Live first
emerged in 2016 and now is a real-time Q&A paid knowledge product with 6 million paying users (Ltd, 2019). Content creators
provide various types of live courses, such as job-seeking guidelines, examination skills, and psychological counselling. To show the
content of live courses, content creators would offer a brief introduction about themselves and courses. Users can view the courses’
description, select what they want to participate in and pay for the courses.
4.1. Instrument development
Payment behavior has typically been measured in terms of frequency of purchase behavior (Dawes, Meyer-Waarden, & Driesener,
2015, (Kim, Kankanhalli, & Lee, 2018)). Thus, we use frequency of live course payment (i.e., the number of payment instances within
the given nine-month period) as our DV. We also collected data on the live course payment amount (i.e., the amount of RMB spent for
live courses within the given nine-month period) for our posthoc analysis. Both objective measures were collected in the second stage
(T2), that is, nine months after the remaining variables. In the first stage (T1), we collected CVs of gender, education, vocation and
income. Other than these constructs, all other subjective constructs were operationalized as multi-item scales and collected at T1.
To develop our survey instruments and measure the subjective constructs, we adopted existing scales. Scales for perceived quality
of free content were modified from the information quality construct of Setia, Setia, Venkatesh, and Joglekar (2013) and Wixom &
Todd, 2005 to fit the context of social Q&A communities, which is a formative-reflective second-order construct. We adapted the
items for perceived credibility of content creators from the measures of source credibility in Sussman & Siegal, 2003. To measure
perceived likeability of content creators, we adapted items from the measures of source likeability in Ferran & Watts, 2008. Perceived
quantity of participants was modified from existing measures of perceived quantity of reviews in Zhang, Zhao, Cheung, and Lee (2014).
Scales for social endorsement were modified from the peer endorsement construct of Lim (2013). They were measured as endorsement
of social environment, which is not limited to peers or friends. All items were phrased with respect to Zhihu Live course payments
through the target Q&A community, Zhihu.
We invited three researchers to review the survey instrument along with the definitions of constructs. Then we conducted a
sorting exercise with several Ph.D. students as judges to test conceptual validity. They identified minor problems in the framing and
phrasing of the items, which were corrected. Next, the survey instrument was reviewed for any ambiguity of wording or format by a
focus group of 15 Zhihu users. Appendix 1 provides the final version of the questionnaire. The measurement items were anchored on
a seven-point Likert scale (from 1=“strongly disagree” to 7=“strongly agree”).
4.2. Data collection
As previously mentioned, our data collection consisted of two waves at different points in time: (1) in the first wave (T1), we
collected subjective data for the IVs and CVs, and (2) in the second wave (T2; after nine months), we collected objective data for the
DV (i.e., frequency of payment for live courses in the given nine-month period) and another outcome for our posthoc robustness test
(i.e., live course payment amount in the given nine-month period) nine months later. In the first wave, we conducted an online survey
of Zhihu users. The survey was administered through an online questionnaire. To verify that our respondents were actual users of
Zhihu, we asked the respondents at the beginning of the survey to upload a screenshot of their personal Zhihu profile. We also
checked whether the respondents previously used Zhihu. Users even without any live course payment experience are regarded as
valid survey participants. We considered that users may take a considerable amount of time to adopt this function and pay for live
courses because Zhihu live was initiated only three years ago in 2016. All Zhihu users are potential live course payment users. The
survey was conducted over a period of five days.
For the first wave of data collection, 274 participants submitted complete questionnaires. We assessed nonresponse bias by
comparing early and late respondents (Armstrong & Overton, 1977). T-tests were conducted on groups of users who replied on the
first two days and on the final two days, which did not differ significantly in terms of gender, education, vocation and income. Thus,
nonresponse bias is not likely to be a concern in our study.
7
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of respondents.
Demographic variables Frequency Percentage
Gender
Male 104 58.4
Female 74 41.5
Education
Middle school or below 0 0
High school 9 5.1
University 101 56.7
Postgraduate or above 68 38.2
Vocation
Full-time student 105 59.0
Technical/R&D personnel 25 14.0
Professionals (e.g., teachers, accountants, lawyers) 21 11.8
Civil servants 10 5.6
Others 17 9.6
Income (in yuan)
<2000 90 50.6
2001–5000 37 20.8
5001–10,000 37 20.8
10,001–20,000 12 6.7
>20,000 2 1.1
However, only 178 responses had uploaded the screenshots of real profile. From the second wave of data collection, we obtained
objective data from 178 users, as shown in Table 1. The descriptive statics of the respondents show that most of them are full-time
students (59%), and have a bachelor's degree (56.7%) or above (38.2%). We compared the respondents from the first wave of data
collection with those from the second wave. T-tests showed that the two groups did not differ significantly in terms of gender,
education, vocation and income. Thus, we used the 178 valid responses for empirical analysis.
4.3. Data analysis and results
We used SmartPLS 2.0 for data analysis. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was used to validate the model because it enables the
incorporation of reflective and formative constructs (Petter, Straub, & Rai, 2007; Ringle, Sarstedt, & Straub, 2012). Furthermore, it is
suitable for analyzing multistage models (Gefen, Rigdon, & Straub, 2011), such as that of the present study, “especially when complex
models and secondary data are involved” (Ringle, Sarstedt, & Straub, 2012). Our DV, namely, frequency of live course payment, is based
on archival data from Zhihu Live, and PLS is thus a good match with this secondary data.
4.3.1. Measurement model analysis

To verify the construct validity and reliability of the reflective first-order factors, we used LISREL to conduct confirmatory factor
analysis, which is a preferred method to determine the fit of a theoretical model to the observed data (Chwelos, Benbasat, & Dexter,
2001). According to Hu & Bentler, 1999, the tested model produced a good model fit, of which the fit indices were above the
recommended threshold value: (χ2/df=701.73/369=1.901; RMSEA=0.070; NNFI=0.96; CFI=0.97; SRMR=0.055). To measure
convergent validity, we examined factor loadings, Cronbach's Alpha (α), composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted
(AVE) and controlled for inter-factor correlations (Gefen, Rigdon, & Straub, 2011). As shown in Appendix 2, the factor loadings were
all significant and greater than 0.7. The AVE for each construct was greater than 0.5. The CR and α values for all constructs exceeded
0.7. Thus, the convergent validity of the measurement instrument was supported.
Then, we assessed the discriminant validity of the measurement model by comparing the square root AVE for each construct with
the correlations between a particular construct and other constructs. As shown in Table 2, the square root of AVE for each construct
Table 2
Correlations between first-order constructs.
ACCY COMP PCC CURE FORM PLC PQ SE WTP
ACCY 0.894
COMP 0.750 0.855
PCC 0.445 0.352 0.915
CURE 0.477 0.454 0.242 0.892
FORM 0.519 0.586 0.400 0.404 0.880
PLC 0.408 0.348 0.767 0.292 0.416 0.864
PQ 0.232 0.191 0.320 0.180 0.206 0.423 0.854
SE 0.301 0.287 0.495 0.238 0.268 0.444 0.329 0.922
WTP 0.300 0.254 0.461 0.281 0.275 0.445 0.452 0.476 0.934
8
Fig. 2. PLS Results on Formative Second-order Factors

Notes: The formative models were analyzed in the PLS model simultaneously with the entire structural model. The number represents weight, which
are significant at the p < 0.001 level.
exceeded the correlations between the construct and those of other constructs. Hence, the discriminant validity of the measures was
established.
Lindell & Whitney, 2001 stated that “the cross-sectional studies of attitude-behavior relationships are vulnerable to the inflation
of correlations by common method variance”. To test the common method bias (CMB), we first performed Harman's single-factor test
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). The result showed that seven factors were extracted from the data, which explained
77.29% of the variance. The most significant factor accounted for 37.10% of the total variance within the accepted range of 50%
(Harman, 1976). Second, we applied the PLS marker variable approach following the procedures suggested by Malhotra, Kim, & Patil,
2006 and Hua, Cheng, Hou and Luo (2019). The marker variable (collective efficacy) was identified in the same survey of our
research, but it is not included in the research model being testing. The average correlation among collective efficacy and the
principal constructs was statistically insignificant (β = 0.01, p > 0.5), thereby confirming that CMB was unlikely to be a serious
concern in this study.
Finally, for our model involving multidimensional constructs, we used PLS to test the second-order formative constructs, as shown
in Fig. 2. The second-order formative models were depicted as the relationship between the first-order and the second-order factor in
PLS. According to Edwards (2001) and Chin, Marcolin, & Newsted, 2003, the paths from the lower-order to the higher-order construct
should be initially modeled. Then, the scores of the latent variables from the PLS analysis in the first step were used as formative
measures for the second-order constructs.
4.3.2. Structural model analysis

After establishing the validity of the measurement model, we analyzed the structural model. The results (shown in Fig. 3) indicate
that perceived quality of free content (H1), perceived credibility of content creators (H2) and perceived quantity of participants (H4) po-
sitively affect the willingness to pay. Furthermore, the results also show that willingness to pay significantly affects frequency of live
course payment (H5). However, we did not find an effect of perceived likeability of content creators on willingness to pay (i.e., H3 was
not supported). We conducted a moderated regression analysis to test the interaction effect of the social endorsement following the
Fig. 3. Structural model results.
9
Table 3
Moderated regression analysis.
Variables DV: Frequency of payment Posthoc: Payment amount
Model Ⅰ Model Ⅱ Model Ⅲ Model Ⅰ Model Ⅱ Model Ⅲ
Control
Gender ns ns ns ns ns ns
Vocation −0.208*** −0.148*** −0.150*** −0.204*** −0.143** −0.144**
Education ns ns ns −0.130*** ns −0.121*
Income 0.167* 0.172** 0.184** 0.162* 0.168** 0.180*
Predictor
Willingness to pay 0.298** 0.293** 0.302** 0.297**
Moderator
Social endorsement −0.322*** −0.272*** −0.341*** −0.296***
Interaction term
Willingness to pay * Social endorsement −0.250** −0.226*
R2 0.053 0.151 0.209 0.055 0.160 0.208
steps of Carte & Russell, 2003. Table 3 shows the results for the three models: Model I includes the CVs, Model II adds a predictor
(willingness to pay) and a moderator (social endorsement), and Model III involves the standardized interaction term. The results
show the negative moderating effect of the social endorsement (H6) on the relationship between willingness to pay and frequency of live
course payment. Thus, H6 was not supported. Overall, the model had an explanatory power (R2) of 20.9% for the DV (frequency of
payment). As for the CVs, the effects of gender and vocation on frequency of payment were not significant. Income had a positive
effect, whereas education had a negative effect.
We conducted two posthoc tests to better understand our results: (1) a mediation test of perceived credibility of content creators
between perceived likeability of content creators and willingness to pay, (2) test the model with live course payment amount as the
outcome. From the first test shown in the Fig. 4, we found that the perceived likeability of content creators significantly influences
perceived credibility of content creators, which mediates the relationship between credibility and users’ willingness to pay.
For the second test, we found essentially similar direct and moderating effects of the IVs and CVs on the live course payment
Appendix 1
Survey Instrument.
Construct Item Wording
Completeness (COMP) COMP1 Zhihu provides a complete set of information.

COPM2 Zhihu produces comprehensive information.
COPM3 Zhihu provides all the information need.
Accuracy (ACCY) ACCY1 The Zhihu produces correct information.
ACCY2 There are few errors in the information obtained from the Zhihu.
ACCY3 The information provided by the Zhihu is accurate.
Format (FORM) FORM1 The information provided by the Zhihu is:
–well formatted.
FORM2 –well laid out.
FORM3 –clearly presented on the screen.
Currency (CURE) CURE1 The Zhihu provide the most recent information.
CURE2 The Zhihu produce the most current information.
CURE3 The information from the Zhihu is always up to date.
Perceived credibility of content creators (PCC) PCC1 How knowledgeable is the content creator who provide information in Zhihu live?
PCC2 To what extent is the content creator who is an expert on providing information?
PCC3 How trustworthy is the content creator who provide information in Zhihu live?
PCC4 How reliable is the content creator who provide information in Zhihu live?
Perceived likeability of content creators (PLC) PLC1 Based on your impressions, how would you rate the content creator in Zhihu live?
Boring—Charismatic
PLC2 Not appealing—Appealing
PLC3 Uninteresting—Interesting
PLC4 Not friendly—Friendly
Perceived quantity of participants (PQ) PQ1 Many people had paid for the content of Zhihu live before.
PQ2 The Zhihu live had a large number of participants.
PQ3 The Zhihu live was very popular on Zhihu community.
Social endorsement (SE) SE1 People around me use Zhihu live.
SE2 People around me have said that they find useful information from Zhihu live.
SE3 People around me have said that Zhihu live is reasonable accurate.
SE4 People around me like Zhihu live.
Willingness to pay (WTP) WTP1 The likelihood of purchasing the content in Zhihu live is…
WTP2 My willingness to pay for the content in Zhihu live is…
WTP3 The probability that I would consider paying for the content in Zhihu live is…
10
Appendix 2
Convergent validity of measures.
Constructs Measurement Items Factor Loadings AVE CR α
Completeness (COMP) COMP1 0.875 0.731 0.890 0.814

COPM2 0.904
COPM3 0.781
Accuracy (ACCY) ACCY1 0.890 0.799 0.923 0.875
ACCY2 0.895
ACCY3 0.897
Format (FORM) FORM1 0.866 0.775 0.912 0.855
FORM2 0.873
FORM3 0.901
Currency (CURE) CURE1 0.883 0.796 0.921 0.871
CURE2 0.910
CURE3 0.883
Perceived credibility of content creators (PCC) PCC1 0.902 0.838 0.954 0.936
PCC2 0.910
PCC3 0.923
PCC4 0.926
Perceived likeability of content creators (PLC) PLC1 0.913 0.747 0.922 0.886
PLC2 0.884
PLC3 0.890
PLC4 0.763
Perceived quantity of participants (PQ) PQ1 0.840 0.729 0.890 0.815
PQ2 0.883
PQ3 0.837
Social endorsement (SE) SE1 0.888 0.851 0.958 0.943
SE2 0.953
SE3 0.927
SE4 0.921
Willingness to pay (WTP) WTP1 0.927 0.872 0.953 0.927
WTP2 0.936
WTP3 0.939
Fig. 4. Mediation test.
amount as that for the frequency of live course payment (Table 3). The only exception was that education positively influences the
live course payment amount, but not the frequency of live course payment. This finding can be due to the increase in live course
payment amount if users are with weak knowledge base and need to pay for obtain much more knowledge. Other than that, we found
a similar moderating effect of social endorsement on the relationships between willingness to pay and frequency of live course
payment and live course payment amount. These results indicate that frequency and amount of live course payment have similar
antecedents (except for the CV of education), which can be influenced in similar ways to generate high revenues for the community
provider from the live services.
11
5. Discussion
This study has several important findings. Notably, willingness to pay is a key determinant of payment behavior, which indicates
that attitudinal factor indeed invokes users’ payment behavior for live courses. Another salient but unexpected finding is that social
endorsement strongly negatively moderates the relationship between willingness to pay and payment behavior. This finding implies
that even though surrounding people have paid for the live courses, their positive comments or recommendation can suppress an
individual's payment behavior. The reason for this finding could be because users are prone to exert less effort on a task if they are in
a group instead of alone, which indicates the phenomenon of social loafing. Social loafing refers to the reduced performance of
individuals who act as part of a group (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). Others’ active acceptance of live courses may weaken
individuals’ payment behavior in the social context. Another possible reason for this result is the culture in China, where a collective
mindset prevails. Earley (1989) compared the culture difference between the United States and China and found that the collectivistic
beliefs in China had a moderating effect on social loafing, which resulted in individuals’ passive performance. The data of respondents
were collected from a social Q&A community in China. Thus, we infer that users regard the payment of live courses as a group-level
task and tend to be free riders on such paid knowledge products.
Finally, results show that systematic information processing (i.e., perceived quality of free content) and the majority of the
heuristic systematic processing strongly influence users’ payment behavior through users’ willingness to pay. Among the antecedents,
factors related to free content, content creators, and live courses are specific attributes of live courses in the context of social Q&A
communities. Although contrary to our hypothesis H3, the perceived likability of content creators did not influence willingness to
pay. The reason for this finding could due to the difficulty in forming fondness from content creators via social communities, which
may be an insufficient driver of users’ willingness to purchase live courses. Another possible reason for this result is that the re-
lationship between perceived likeability of content creators and willingness to pay could be mediated by perceived credibility of
content creators, which aligns with the results in the first posthoc test. In the research on consumer-celebrity relationship, consumers
tend to pay more attention to celebrities or strongly endorse preferred celebrities (Ilicic & Webster, 2011; Stever, 2011). The users’
“liking” feeling toward content creators will strengthen the assessment of the content creators’ credibility, which has a strong sig-
nificant influence on willingness to pay.
6. Implications
6.1. Theoretical implications
This study offers several important research contributions. First, it adds to the literature related to paid content revenue in the
context of social Q&A communities. Online communities use traditional revenue sources, such as membership fees (Seraj, 2012),
advertising (Nelson, 2002), and digital items (Kim, Chan, & Kankanhalli, 2012). However, the sustainability of online communities is
often hindered by the lack of stable revenue modes or understanding of how to operationalize paid products or services. Thus, how to
leverage different sources of revenue is essential to maintain communities (Animesh, Pinsonneault, Yang, & Oh, 2011; Oestreicher-
Singer & Zalmanson, 2013). This study contributes in explaining how users pay for live courses, which can be advantages for content
creators and social Q&A communities. Specifically, the findings elucidate how community users assess and decide to pay for live
courses.
Second, this study addresses a research gap in the current literature on users’ payment behavior for knowledge products from
social Q&A communities where there is a lack of theoretically grounds. In addition, we empirically tested the models to understand
online content payment behavior of users. With the increasing trend and attention involved in social Q&A communities, the majority
of studies focused on knowledge sharing and contribution behavior (to a large extent, free participation behavior) (e.g., Jin, Li,
Zhong, & Zhai, 2015; Oh, 2012). However, only a few studies explored this phenomenon (e.g., Cai, Luo, Fu & Ding, 2018; Li, 2018;
Zhao, Peng, Liu, Song, & Hansen, 2019), with objectives that differ from those of the present study. Cai, Luo, Fu, and Ding (2018)
explored the different phases of daily sales of Zhihu Live by analyzing objective data. They found that the number of “likes” positively
affects daily sales before the live starts with the same result after the live ends. Li (2018) derived several motivators to investigate
users’ content contribution behavior in Zhihu. Zhao, Peng, Liu, Song, and Hansen (2019) explored users’ motivators to pay by only
collecting subjective data. Although research has been conducted in the social Q&A community setting or in the users' payment
behavior, users’ subjective perception and objective behavior have not been considered together yet. We address this research gap
and collect both the subjective and objective data to understand users’ behavioral process.
Third, this study has implications for integrating scent-based IFT, SIF, and HSM by highlighting the value of information foraging
and processing, which helps to explore payment behavior for live courses in particular. IFT proposes that users intend to find valuable
knowledge during the search for information. Information scents, as assessment cues in information foraging, can be regarded as
influencing factors when evaluating information. From this perspective, we employ HSM to classify information scents as heuristic
and systematic cues. HSM is a traditional model for investigating validity-seeking context (Majchrzak & Jarvenpaa, 2010); however,
few research has paid attention to information processing when facing a paid knowledge product or service. Especially, the features of
social Q&A communities suggest that users’ searching context is in an environment where people are gathered. As a theory that
explains the influence of social environment during information foraging, SIF can be used to understand how social influence affects
user payment behavior. Through these theories, we distinguish information scents and measure users’ cognitive effort and preference
for information foraging. In this study, we provided evidence that multiple theories can be combined in a theoretical framework,
which can fit and provide a comprehensive explanation of user payment behavior in the social Q&A communities context.
12
Finally, through collecting subjective and objective data over time from the social Q&A community, this study contributes by
exlaining users' payment behavior for live courses through individual (IFT and HSM) and contextual (SIF) routes. To pay for live
courses, users carefully consider and assess the value of live courses. After gaining familiarity with this type of paid knowledge
product, they may perform the payment behavior more quickly with little cognitive processing effort. The results indicate that users’
evaluation of live courses and communities influence willingness to pay, as hypothesized. In addition, users will pay for live courses
at a later time if they possess willingness to pay. However, social endorsement might reduce personal cost on live courses to a certain
extent, which is contrary to the hypothesis that users’ payment behavior cannot be stimulated.
6.2. Practical implications
Our results also have important practical implications for revenue generation in social Q&A communities by offering paid
knowledge products of live courses. In line with the theoretical research model and empirical findings, we provide several suggestions
for content creators and community managers respectively.
First, concerning content quality, content creators should offer high quality of information and knowledge by considering content
completeness, accuracy, currency, and the format. While community managers can provide simple signals that can represent the
quality of content, such as ratings or the “star” marks. Second, the result shows that credibility of content creators is vital for users’
willingness to pay. Content creators can add more educational background information to enhance their trustworthiness and ex-
pertise. And community managers can rank content creators’ expertise degree according to their educational background and content
evaluation. As a reminder, raising credibility for content creators can be beneficial for the sales of live courses. Third, the quantity of
participants’ perceived by users has an important influence on willingness to pay. Community managers can recommend highly
participated live courses to other users to attract users to pay. Fourth, users in social Q&A communities inevitably would be affected
by others’ endorsement of a topic or a product. Although a surprising result reveals that social endorsement has a negative mod-
erating effect, managers can also utilize this effect by weakening the connection of close friends and guiding users to engage more in
unfamiliar discussion zones, which might be helpful to the sales of live courses.
6.3. Limitations and future research
This study contains several limitations, which also open up multiple potential opportunities for future research. These limitations
can be interpreted from two aspects: methodology and research content. In terms of research methodology, the first limitation is the
using of Zhihu as a single data source. The results can be generalized to similar communities, such as Himalaya, which would be more
persuasive by replicating the research across other social Q&A communities that offer similar paid knowledge products. Second, we
target subjects from China. Thus, the results can be further extend to other countries where IT technology, culture background, and
economic conditions may differ. Third, although we used both subjective and objective data to test the causal relationships based on
existing theories, we cannot manipulate the predictor variables. Given that a field experiment can combine the strengths of field
studies and laboratory experiments, future research can employ field experiment methods to examine how users forage for in-
formation scents and distinguish which scents affect information foraging.
Regarding the research content, two other limitations also exist for several reasons. The fourth limitation is the lack of price
consideration. When users decide to pay for live courses, they will pay a certain amount of money. Initially, we aimed to determine
the influence of price. However, the price of live courses is dynamic, which results in our inability to obtain the exact transaction
price. In addition, the majority of live courses only cost a cheap and affordable amount, which ranges from one to ten yuan.
Therefore, we hold that price may not play a significant role in this circumstance. Future studies can obtain the exact transaction
price and explore the relationship across prices and sale volumes, which will help in formulating an appropriate pricing strategy. Last,
this study examined payment behavior for live courses through social Q&A communities, although people can also acquire knowledge
from other channels, such as e-book, course video, and traditional offline training institutions. Future studies can consider these
different approaches to knowledge diffusion to understand how the payment motivators differ in these contexts.
7. Conclusion
This study aimed to elucidate how users can be motivated to pay for knowledge products in social Q&A communities. On the basis
of the IFT and SIF, the research model was built to explore different information scents when users forage for information and
investigate how these scents affect users’ payment behavior for live courses. The empirical results confirmed the key roles of content
quality, credibility of content creators, and quantity of participants in determining users’ willingness to pay, and revealed the ne-
gative moderating effect of social endorsement between willingness to pay and payment behavior. This study thus contributes to prior
literature by advancing the theoretical understanding of payment behavior toward knowledge products and its antecedents. Given
the significance of revenue management in operating online communities, our research provides empirical evidence to help raising
sales of paid knowledge products (live courses) in practice.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xiao Shi: Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Data curation, Visualization. Xiabing
Zheng: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Feng
13
Yang: Resources, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgements
Dr. Xiabing Zheng would like to acknowledge the supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No.
71701195).National Natural Science of China Prof. Feng Yang would like to acknowledge the supports from the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 71631006, 71991464 and 71921001).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102241.
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Information Processing and Management 57 (2020) 102241

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Information Processing and Management

Exploring payment behavior for live courses in social Q&A

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

2.1. Social Q&A communities and live courses

information than for search information.

2.2. Scent-based cues

2.2.1. Information foraging theory

2.2.2. Heuristic-systematic model and scent-based cues

2.3. Social information foraging theory

3. Research model and hypotheses

Fig. 1. Research model.

3.1. Scent-based information of systematic cue: content quality

3.2. Scent-based information of heuristic cues: credibility, likeability, participants’ quantity

3.4. Social foraging process: social endorsement

4.1. Instrument development

4.2. Data collection

4.3. Data analysis and results

4.3.1. Measurement model analysis

Fig. 2. PLS Results on Formative Second-order Factors

4.3.2. Structural model analysis

Fig. 3. Structural model results.

Model Ⅰ Model Ⅱ Model Ⅲ Model Ⅰ Model Ⅱ Model Ⅲ

Completeness (COMP) COMP1 Zhihu provides a complete set of information.

Completeness (COMP) COMP1 0.875 0.731 0.890 0.814

Fig. 4. Mediation test.

6.1. Theoretical implications

6.2. Practical implications

6.3. Limitations and future research

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Yang: Resources, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Journal of Electronic Commerce, 22(3), 386–418.

recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879.

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