What are Social Information Signals Worth? Evidence from Randomized Field Experiments

Abstract

In this study, we examine how does social information drive user engagement in e-learning platforms. We model two distinct outcomes related to user engagement: content consumption CC (e.g., watching a video) and content organization CO (e.g., adding a video to a playlist). We examine two types of social information signals, which are distinguished based on the source: peer actions (PA) and expert recommendation (ER). We employ a series of field experiments on a mobile e-learning application to tease out the causal influence of PA and ER information signals on CC and CO. Our results indicate that the two information signals exert uneven influence, driving CC but not CO actions of user. These finding presents an important boundary condition for the influence of social information signals across the user engagement ladder. The study contributes to recent discussion on the potential value and impact of revealing information signals about other users’ behavior in digital platforms