“中立性”用户创造内容的作用机制与形成模式研究

User-generated content (UGC) refers to media content created by users to share information and/or opinions with other users. UGC significantly influences consumer behavior and firm performance, because UGC is created, shared, and consumed by users and therefore usually perceived as creditable and trustworthy. While existing studies shed light on positive and negative UGC, they ignore neutral UGC. Actually, fifty percentages of UGCs are neutral ones. Ignoring neutral UGC and only focusing on positive and negative UGC will lead to bias on the framework of UGC. This project (1) expands the research perspective from extremity to neutrality, and differentiates mixed neutral and indifference neutral; (2) extends the impacting mechanism from direct to indirect, and following MOA theory, considers neutral UGC as meditated-moderator who could increase or decrease the effects of positive and negative UGCs; and (3) enlarges the forming model from self-generation to social generation, and investigates the effect of inconsistency of others opinion, firm’s participation in social interaction, and user’s network location on neutral UGC formation. Moreover, based on sentiment analysis, hypergraph analysis, data mining technology, and experiment, this project try to give answers on whether neutral UGC has effect on firm performance, how would neutral UGC generate effect, and how users create neutral UGC. The results of this project have theoretical contributions on UGC literature, and also help firms to comprehensively understand the true value of extremity and neutrality UGCs.

用户创造内容对消费者行为和企业绩效具有显著的影响。已有研究往往侧重于考察正面和负面偏向内容，较少去关注中立性内容。实际上，用户创造的50%以上的内容是中立性的。忽视这些数量巨大的中立性内容而仅仅考察正面和负面偏向内容，对认识用户创造内容是不完整的。本项目（1）将研究视角由偏向性拓展至中立性，区分混合中立和无差异中立的不同之处；（2）将作用机制由直接作用延伸至间接作用，基于MOA理论，提出中立性内容是有中介的调节变量，会与偏向性内容产生交互效应；（3）将形成模式由自我创造扩充至社会化创造，分析他人观点不一致性、企业参与社会互动以及用户的网络位置对中立性内容创造的影响。通过情感分析、超图分析、数据挖掘以及实验的方法，本项目试图回答中立性内容对绩效是否有用、如何产生作用、以及如何形成的等问题。研究结论有助于完善用户创造内容的理论、有助于企业全面理解偏向性和中立性内容的价值。

用户创造内容指用户借助于社交媒体在社会互动过程中所产生的产品评论、描述、话题、讨论、博客以及视频等内容。鉴于用户创造内容的重要商业价值，众多学者对其进行了大量研究。用户创造内容可以分为正面偏向内容、负面偏向内容和中立内容。大多数文献侧重于探讨正面和负面偏向内容，他们却较少关注混合性中立内容（同等程度的正面和负面评价元素）和无差异性中立内容（未呈现任何正面和负面评价元素），也较少关注三种内容同时存在的情景（内容的偏向高度不一致），即内容多元性或不一致性。本项目围绕用户创造内容，在现有文献和理论的基础上，探讨了混合中立和无差异中立对绩效的影响效果及内在机制，探析了正负偏向和中立内容三者的多元性对绩效的影响，探究了新产品上市时机、用户社会网络结构、社会互动等因素对正负和中立内容形成模式的作用，由此构建内容的前因和后果的理论框架。另外，项目组还借鉴和拓展用户行为的研究和方法论，检验了用户在新产品开发过程中的参与创造行为对企业绩效的影响。本项目的研究结论有助于完善用户创造内容的理论、拓展研究方法和提供企业实践指导。