From free to fee: Exploring the factors that influence the askers' switching behavior on online Q&A platforms

More and more social Q&A platforms are launching new business models to monetize online knowledge. Many users of the traditional free Q&A are gradually adopting the payment‐based Q&A services. Previous studies have focused more on askers' participation behaviors in the free Q&A context, while few of them explored the switching behavior of askers from free‐ to payment‐based Q&A platforms. Based on the push‐pull‐mooring (PPM) model, this paper aims at exploring the influencing factors of askers' switching behavior using the critical incident technique. The classification scheme of the factors that influence the askers' switching behaviors includes 5 categories and 16 subcategories. We also use the entropy‐weight method to calculate the weight of each factor. The findings suggest that the psychological characteristics, cognitive needs, and financial incentives have great impacts on askers' switching behavior in the Q&A context.

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