Abstract:

Drawing upon the customer perceived value theory, the study explored the factors that influence users' willing to pay for online Q&A platform. An online survey approach was adopted, and found that both perceived benefits (content benefits and monetary benefits) and perceived sacrifices (fees and other nonmonetary sacrifices) could explain and predict users' consuming willingness of online Q&A very well, of which the perceived content benefit was the strongest predictor. Besides, the results identified the partial mediating effect of perceived value between the two monetary factors (perceived monetary benefits and perceived fee), and users'willing to pay, and the full mediating effect of perceived value between nonmonetary factors (perceived content benefits and perceived monetary benefits) and users' willing to pay. In terms of variance explained, the two monetary factors were far more important than the other two nonmonetary factors in influencing users' willing to pay.

Keywords: Online Q&A platform, Paying for knowledge, Perceived value, Paying willingness, Perceived benefit, Perceived sacrifices