Temporary suspensions are a common tool for social media platforms trying to curb bad behavior. Break the rules, lose posting privileges for a few days and, in theory, return ready to behave better.
New research from Lubar College Assistant Professor Xiaohui Zhang suggests it may not work that way.
“Platforms have gotten good at deciding who to punish,” said Zhang, who teaches information technology management. “They’ve spent much less time asking what those users do the moment they come back.”
Zhang and researchers from Purdue University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and Arizona State University studied 34,258 active users of Zhihu, a large question-and-answer platform in China, over five months. About one in five users was suspended at some point. The researchers matched suspended users with similar users who had not been suspended to better understand the effect of the ban itself.
Their findings, published in MIS Quarterly, were striking.
After returning, suspended users posted nearly 13% more than expected. But the quality of their contributions declined. Their answers were about 26 words shorter, more negative and opinion-based, included less reasoning and evidence, and shifted away from informational questions toward venting.
Zhang points to a psychological response known as “reactance.” When people believe their freedom has been restricted, they may push back in an effort to regain it.
“When people feel a freedom has been taken away, many act to reclaim it,” Zhang said. “A suspension doesn’t just pause an account. It tells someone they’ve been judged. A lot of them come back louder.”
But the researchers discovered an important exception. Users who had previously received recognition on the platform, such as a badge or featured answer, responded differently. After a suspension, they posted 46% less, and their answers received about twice as many up-votes.
Zhang believes those users had something different at stake. Recognition may have strengthened their connection to the online community, making a suspension feel less like a conflict with the platform and more like a reason to reconsider their behavior.
“They had standing to protect, and they saw the platform as their own community rather than an opponent,” Zhang said.
The findings could offer a useful lesson for online platforms wrestling with how to encourage better behavior. Temporary bans may remain an important enforcement tool, but punishment alone may not produce the desired result. Recognizing positive contributions and giving users a greater sense of belonging could help make discipline more effective.
“Punishment tells people what not to do. Recognition gives them a reason to care,” Zhang said. “Platforms that do only the first shouldn’t be surprised when it backfires.”
| Research@Lubar Faculty scholarship in the Lubar College of Business spans the business fields and beyond through both theoretical and applied research that is published in leading journals. Here are some of our faculty’s most recent publications: |
| Deep Chain-of-Preference: A Novel Deep Learning Method for Mixed-Grained Recommendation MIS Quarterly Gang Chen, Tan Cheng, Jianxiong Wang, Shuaiyong Xiao and Huimin Zhao |
| Non-underwritten Placements of Equity Journal of Corporate Finance Siyuan Fan, Ioannis Floros, Leonardo Madureira and Ajai K. Singh |
| A Theory-Based Link Prediction Model for Online Social Networks Communications of the Association for Information Systems Gelareh Towhidi, Atish Sinha and Huimin Zhao |
| Click here to see more faculty research |