IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tbitxx/v44y2025i8p1521-1538.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What makes UGC more popular on social media platforms? Insights from information adoption theory

Author

Listed:
  • Wei Zhuang
  • Qingfeng Zeng
  • Yu Zhang
  • Dijia Lin
  • Weiguo Fan

Abstract

It is becoming an important marketing strategy for enterprises to utilise user-generated content (UGC) to build brands and promote products on social media platforms, but little is known about the influence mechanism of the popularity of UGC related to brands and products. Drawing upon information adoption theory, this study developed a conceptual model to explain what makes UGC more popular in social media context. Using a dataset of 16,974 records related to the UGC about products from Xiaohongshu app, the most popular user experience sharing platform in China, the empirical study indicates that factors extracted from information quality and source credibility have significant effects on UGC popularity. Interestingly, text length and strength of text sentiment have different effects moderated by product types. In addition, media richness may lead to information redundancy and weaken the effect of text length. The findings offer an insightful understanding into the mechanism of utilising UGC in product marketing on social media platforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Wei Zhuang & Qingfeng Zeng & Yu Zhang & Dijia Lin & Weiguo Fan, 2025. "What makes UGC more popular on social media platforms? Insights from information adoption theory," Behaviour and Information Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(8), pages 1521-1538, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tbitxx:v:44:y:2025:i:8:p:1521-1538
    DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2024.2361835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2361835
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2361835?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tbitxx:v:44:y:2025:i:8:p:1521-1538. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tbit .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.