市场营销学系学术讲座（12月10日）

时   间：2024年12月10日（周二）14:00-15:30  

地   点：思源教授楼624室

主   题： Catalyst or Curse: An Analysis of Fake Engagement on Digital Content Platforms

主讲人：任启天 助理教授，香港中文大学（深圳）

主持人：殷云露 副教授

摘    要：

The growing competition for visibility on digital content platforms has given rise to a shadow market for buying and selling fake social media engagement. This paper examines the economic incentives that drive content creators to purchase fake engagement and analyzes its effects on content creation, consumption, and platform policies. Using a game-theoretic model, we demonstrate how creators strategically determine content quality while deciding whether to buy fake engagement to gain a competitive edge in viewership. Interestingly, our findings indicate that, under certain conditions, fake engagement can intensify competition among creators, thereby enhancing overall content quality, increasing viewer surplus, and boosting advertising revenue for the platform. When advertising revenue-sharing is endogenously determined, platforms may have incentives to share a portion of the advertising revenue with creators to indirectly encourage the purchase of fake engagement, creating a “win-win-win” scenario for creators, viewers, and the platform. Furthermore, we find that platforms may not always have an incentive to perfect their fake engagement detection technologies, even when improvement costs are negligible.

简   介：

Qitian Ren is currently an Assistant Professor of Marketing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He earned his Ph.D. in Marketing from Columbia University in 2018. His research focuses on digital marketing, creator and platform economy, recommendation algorithms, and behavioral economics. His work has been published in top-tier academic journals, including Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Marketing Science (2024-). Dr. Ren has received several prestigious teaching awards, including the Presidential Exemplary Teaching Award and the Shenzhen Excellent Teacher Award.

市场营销学系

2024-11-15