Are sticky users less likely to lurk? Evidence from online reviews

ABSTRACT

Although many product providers deem user contributions (e.g. online reviews) important, providers often struggle to obtain them, i.e. most users are lurkers who are reluctant to post reviews. This study is conducted to understand better how to delurk users by investigating the role of user stickiness in review posting behaviour. By employing a large-scale dataset from TapTap, a Chinese mobile game community, and conducting a multimethod investigation, this study found that sticky users with a product are more likely to engage in review posting behaviour related to the product. Also, this positive stickiness-post effect varies for some user and product features: (a) the positive relationship between user stickiness and posting behaviour will be strengthened as user expertise rises, (b) the positive stickiness-post relationship will be alleviated when products are collaborative-consuming products (vs. private-consuming products), (c) and the positive stickiness effect on review posting behaviour will be stronger when product providers are small-scale (vs. large-scale). These findings provide a comprehensive understanding of biases in lurking/posting behaviour related to user stickiness and help product providers gain insights into delurking users and gathering user intelligence.

KEYWORDS:

• Lurking behaviour
• posting behaviour
• online reviews
• user stickiness
• product consumption patterns
• user expertise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 72131005, 72121001, and 72171062]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2022FRFK0600XX].