From Anonymity to Accountability: How Virtual Identity Disclosure Changes the Quantity and Quality of “Likes”

An integral component of user participation in community-based platforms is giving “likes” to content posted by others. At the same time, online social participation differs from offline social participation in that online users are often allowed to create a virtual identity unrelated to their real-world identity. The objective of this study is to identify the motivations behind users’ giving “likes” when their virtual identity (i.e., username) is hidden or shown. Specifically, we leverage a natural experiment to examine the effect of virtual identity disclosure on users’ “liking” behavior. Our identification strategy relies on an exogenous policy change in an online community-based platform, where likers’ username was not visible before but publicly shown after the change. Our results show that users “liked” fewer but higher-quality articles after the policy change, consistent with their protective self-presentation motivation. This study emphasizes the significance of virtual identity, arguing that a virtual identity devoid of real-world information should not be equated with anonymity. It also underscores the importance of protective self-presentation over acquisitive self-presentation, suggesting that research should focus not only on the actions users take but also on those they intentionally avoid taking. Furthermore, our study identifies “liking” as a key channel of self-presentation, complementing the focus on posting behaviors in the extant literature. Practically, platforms can refine their policies on virtual identity disclosure to enhance content engagement, whereas content creators should tailor their offerings to meet the self-presentation needs of their audience.

History: Sam Ransbotham, Senior Editor; Jason Chan, Associate Editor.

Funding: This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [Grants 72121001, 72293562, 7247030852] and the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC) [Grants GRF 14504524, 14500521, 165052947, 14501320].

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0335.