Increasing willingness to pay through encouraging social participation - A Web experiment

Content websites have been experimenting in recent years with charging users for their content offerings. However, reported conversion rates of around 1-5% of total unique website users make this strategy feasible only for websites that cater to millions of users. How, then, can a website raise conversion rates without significantly enlarging its user base? Content websites have begun to incorporate social features, providing platforms for community formation. Users' engagement with a website's social features has been shown to increase their willingness to pay. This research investigates the effect of acts of initiated participation - "calls to action" made by website owners - on users' willingness to pay in content websites. We designed an experiment in which users explore a content website and are required to respond to requests for participatory acts. We show that users who are given the calls to action in increasing order of effort level are willing to pay more for a monthly subscription or in a one-time donation, compared with users who are not exposed to such prompts. Interestingly, we show that the order of activities is crucial; when the tasks are not initiated according to increasing order of effort, the results do not hold.