The Generation of Willingness to Pay in Cross-Platform Fan Communities: A Comparative Study of the Mutual Constitution of Platform Policies and Community Behavioral Dynamics

The proliferation of platform-based fan communities has transformed how cultural content is produced, consumed, and monetized, yet the relationship between platform payment architectures and the cultural norms that emerge within fan communities remains poorly understood. As platforms increasingly shape not only what fans can pay for but also how payment itself is understood, understanding how payment cultures are generated across different platform environments has become urgent. This study examines how platform monetization policies and fan community norms interact across four platforms—Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Lofter, and AO3—to generate distinct and self-reinforcing payment cultures. Through a comparative case study design incorporating community observation, textual analysis, and semi-structured interviews with 16 active members, we identify four consumption models arrayed along two axes: consumption drive (commercial vs. affective) and linkage mode (collective vs. atomistic). A self-constructed commercialization index reveals a negative correlation between platform commercialization intensity and perceived community agency, suggesting that less intensive platform governance may paradoxically foster deeper community loyalty on members' own terms. Content creators emerge as pivotal mediators in this bidirectional feedback loop.