Although displaying local popularity is wildly adopted by major platforms, the actual effect of such information cues on motivating users has not been documented. Findings from a field experiment suggest that local popularity effectively motivates users to invite more friends but surprisingly reduces users’ self-participation. Social conformity theory may account for such effects: local information encourages users to invite their local friends, but such effect is limited to users from small cities since users in a relatively small community are more bonded and less likely to reject the invitation due to social pressure. Meanwhile, local information attenuates the power of popularity (e.g., fewer registered users in the local area) and ultimately discourages users\u27 self-participation. This study deepens our understanding of displaying popularity cue in improving platform operation, based on which we suggest that practitioners should be cautious about the persuasive power of such information cues in location-based marketing
