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The purpose of this paper is to examine the driving factors of user innovation behaviors using the case of smartphone applications to estimate the indirect and direct effects of consumers’ attitudes toward user-generated content (UGC).

This study proposes a structural model to examine the relationship between user innovation behaviors toward UGC and three attitude factors: involvement, consumer knowledge and customer orientation. The empirical analysis is based on a consumer survey that examines the commonalities and differences between Japan and China. In each country, two social media services are chosen as representative cases of the UGC business model to measure user innovation behaviors toward the quality and quantity aspects.

Customer orientation is the most significant driving factor of user innovation behaviors toward UGC. It positively affects both the number of followers and the frequency of information transmissions. In particular, for the quality dimension of user innovation, customer orientation has a more significant effect on the number of followers than does familiarity.

This study emphasizes the quality aspect of user innovation. Previous research has focused on the quantity of user innovation behaviors by measuring the amount of information. However, this research measures both the quality and the quantity aspects with the number of followers and the frequency of uploading content. The findings of this study suggest that companies should maintain relationships with highly customer-oriented users to manage content quality.