What does leveling up bring? A study on the ex post incentives of the hierarchical privilege levels in online brand communities

To foster contributions from community members, many online communities have adopted hierarchical privilege levels. Existing research predominantly views this incentive as a form of ex ante incentive, discussing their role before users receive promotion rewards. This paper focuses more on the ex post incentive of hierarchical privilege levels, that is, the changes in user behavior within the community after they have been promoted. Through empirical analysis of user posts in the Xiaomi community, we find that the hierarchy has a significant positive impact on the quality of users’ subsequent contributions and plays a positive role in enhancing peer recognition. However, the hierarchy does not have a significant effect on increasing official recognition. Our study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the effects and operational mechanisms of the hierarchy, supplements existing studies on the dimensions of user contribution quality, and provides insights into the strategic operations of online brand communities. • Hierarchical incentives in online communities can function as ex post incentives. • Leveling up enhances the quality of user posts. • Combining level labels with numerical levels provides stronger incentives. • Setting an appropriate number of levels is advantageous.