Strategizing Participation: AI-Driven Strategies to Mitigate Participation Inequality

Music City Center 

Participation inequality-where most users contribute little content-in the rapidly expanding creator economy threatens platform sustainability. To address this, we introduce a novel theory-based AI-driven approach for platform strategists involving three steps: (1) A generative AI (GenAI) agent perceives its environment through data understanding and pattern recognition; (2) It learns creators' engagement states and behaviors via dynamic learning; and (3) It conducts counterfactual analyses using real-world data to generate personalized, engagement-state-based strategies. Using online literary markets for empirical investigation, we show that our GenAI agent can identify multiple engagement states and generate tailored, AI-optimized incentives that enhance platform revenue while reducing participation inequality. Our research demonstrates how advanced AI models can improve platform managers' strategic decision-making and support content creators' entrepreneurial efforts.

Generative AI, strategic management, participation inequality, creator economy, engagement 

Business and Economic Statistics Section