Online creators’ strategic cooperation in two-sided synchronous UGC market: Empirical evidence from a livestreaming platform

Abstract

This study explores widespread cooperation among live content creators on synchronous user-generated content (UGC) platforms. It introduces a typology of online cooperation – hyping, peering, and spreading – based on creators’ relative popularity statuses and proposes a framework exploring resource-based cooperative strategies and the economic impacts of the three cooperation types. The study reveals varying effects of homophily-based and reciprocity-based strategies on the three cooperation types. The findings also highlight the network effects arising from cooperation and identify conflicting impacts of hyping on creator and platform growth. These findings offer essential insights for managing platform growth in the synchronous UGC market.