A belief in rewards accelerates cooperation on consumer-generated media

Fujio Toriumi (), Hitoshi Yamamoto and Isamu Okada
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Fujio Toriumi: The University of Tokyo
Hitoshi Yamamoto: Rissho University
Isamu Okada: Soka University

Journal of Computational Social Science, 2020, vol. 3, issue 1, No 2, 19-31

Abstract: Abstract Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) are useful for sharing information, but information does not come without cost. Incentives to discourage free riding (receiving information, but not providing it) are, therefore, offered to CGM users. The public goods game framework is a strong tool for analyzing and understanding CGM and users’ information behaviors. Although it is well known that rewards are needed for maintaining cooperation in CGM, the existing models hypothesize three unnatural hypotheses: the linkage hypothesis, unlimited meta-rewarder, and sanction without expectation. In this study, we update the meta-reward model to identify a realistic situation through which to achieve a cooperation on CGM. Our model reveals that restricted public goods games cannot provide cooperative regimes when players are myopic and never have any strategies on their actions. Cooperative regimes emerge if players that provide the first-order rewards know whether cooperative players will give the second-order rewards to the first-order rewarders. In the context of CGM, active posting of articles occurs if potential commenters/responders can ascertain that the user posting the article will respond to their comments.

Keywords: Public goods game; Consumer-generated media; Agent-based simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s42001-019-00049-5

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