Does David Make A Goliath? Impact of Rival’s Expertise Signals on Online User Engagement
研究在线词汇游戏中，对手专长的相对和绝对信息如何影响用户参与，发现应根据游戏结果动态调整信息显著性，并考虑玩家的动机框架（竞争型vs学习型）。
How can digital platforms and applications engage users? This question remains of foremost interest to managers of such digital settings. In this study, we offer an informational answer to this problem, showing that digital contexts that engage users through contests and competitions can leverage information signals about rivals to influence engagement. More precisely, we show that the effect of relative and absolute information about rival expertise has a distinct influence on the focal user’s engagement in a two-player online vocabulary game. Our findings offer several recommendations for the formulation and disclosure of rival expertise information. First, we suggest that information about rival expertise should have a dynamic salience based on the actual gameplay outcomes. Second, we recommend that platforms collect information about players’ motivational framing (competitive versus learning) and use it as input when disclosing rival expertise information, as we find significant heterogeneity based on their motivational framing in their responses to such information.