Abstract: With the growth of internet users and the improvement of user experience on online video platforms, video platforms have now become a frequently used product in people’s online lives. At present, mainstream video platforms can be seen as multilateral platforms composed of platform operators, platform users, content providers and advertisers. The video content generally comes from three sources: copyrighted videos, User Generated Content (UGC) and platform made content. Among them, the UGC media platform, such as Tiktok and Bilibili, provides space for excellent content creators and attracts a large number of audience fans. The operating model of this platform is to provide users with free videos and earn advertising revenue by placing advertisements in the videos. Due to users’ innate aversion to advertising, their perception of videos on the platform is influenced by the proportion of advertising and content allocation in the video and the degree of compatibility between the two. In order to attract more users to join the platform, on the one hand, the platform can adopt compensation strategy to motivate content creators to create higher quality videos; on the other hand, investing in value-added services for users can increase their stickiness to the platform. Users may choose to watch videos on one or more platforms for entertainment or pursuit of high-quality videos, resulting in different attribution behaviors, namely, single attribution and multiple attribution. At this time, different attribution behaviors of users may affect platform compensation and investment decisions. In addition, the advertising revenue of the platform is closely related to the scale of content creators on the platform. The larger the scale of content creators, the more they can attract more users to join the platform, thereby generating more advertising revenue. Different sizes of content creators can lead to differences in platform profits, so the decision faced by platforms is how to determine the optimal compensation and investment strategy based on the size of content creators.
Considering the different attribution of consumers, a monopoly model and a duopoly competition model are constructed to discuss how the scale of content creators affects the decision-making and profits of platform and content creators. Additionally, an in-depth analysis is conducted on how the influencing factor of content creator size affects platform, content creator decision-making and profits through numerical examples. The research has found that whether in a monopolistic market or a competitive market, the platform should compensate content creators with the same commission level, and in an equilibrium state, the investment level of value-added services on the platform, the proportion of content in the video creation of content creators and the fit between content and advertising depend on the scale of content creators. Due to the larger scale of content creators in a monopolistic market compared to a competitive market, platform should provide more investment in value-added services, and content creators should make more efforts to increase the proportion of content and the compatibility between content and advertising. The profits of platform and content creators in the monopolistic market are not always greater than those in the competitive market, which depends on the scale of content creators; in the competitive market, when the scale of content creators is greater than a certain threshold, the platform profits under the user multi-attribution model are greater than those under user single attribution model; both platform and content creators are communities of interest in competitive and monopolistic markets.

Key words: UGC media platform, value-added service investment, content creator scale, different user attribution, compensation strategy

摘要： 以UGC媒体平台为研究对象构建博弈模型,探讨内容创作者规模如何影响平台的内容创作者补偿策略和用户增资服务投资策略,并比较垄断、用户单归属的寡头竞争与用户多归属的寡头竞争三种模型下各方利润。研究发现:(1)无论在垄断市场还是竞争市场,平台以相同佣金水平补偿内容创作者;垄断市场下内容创作者规模大于竞争市场,平台会进行更多增值服务投资,内容创作者会提高内容占比和契合度以创作出更高质量的视频。(2)平台和内容创作者在垄断市场下的利润并不总是大于竞争市场下的利润,这取决于竞争市场上内容创作者规模;在竞争市场中,当内容创作者规模大于一定阈值时,用户多归属下的平台利润大于用户单归属下;无论在竞争市场还是垄断市场,平台与内容创作者收益和损失趋势总是相同的,二者是利益共同体。

关键词: UGC媒体平台, 增值服务投资, 内容创作者规模, 用户不同归属, 补偿策略