Utilitarianism and knowledge growth during status seeking: Evidence from text mining of online reviews

Websites with user-generated content (UGC) usually adopt incentive hierarchies to encourage users to contribute content continuously and to realize increasingly higher status in the online community through achieving increasingly more difficult goals. Yet the literature remains largely unclear on how these incentive hierarchies affect user behavior during status seeking. Empirical findings drawn from the data of 19,674 TripAdvisor members suggest that 1) at a lower status or earlier stage, members are more eager for quick promotion and utilitarianism results in fewer words per review; and 2) members’ knowledge grows as their status rises. This study concludes by offering theoretical and managerial implications for both research and practice.