Does Incentivization Promote Sharing “True” Content Online?

Information sharing is often driven by social, legal, and financial incentives. To understand online information-sharing behaviour, the present study assessed whether incentivizing people to share “good” and factual content and disincentivizing the sharing of misinformation influenced information sharing. A mock social media platform was created where participants were shown posts that they could share, react to (using emojis), or choose ‘read more’ to get more information. Participants (N = 908) were divided into two groups where they received either financial (micropayments) or social (followers) incentives for each true information they shared. Results showed that incentivization, regardless of the type, encouraged people to share more true information; however, the two incentivised groups did not differ in their sharing behaviour, of all posts, regardless of veracity. Further, older and more educated individuals and those with a right-leaning political ideology were more likely to share posts, with the latter being more likely to react to posts as well. Limitations and future directions are discussed.