With the rise of internet and social networks, businesses are increasingly becoming dependent on cumulative knowledge of customers to get access to external ideas and solutions in recent years. IT tools have been seen as consumer empowerment instruments to engage customers and encourage them to participate in service and product development processes. However, there is a high failure rate of online B2C co-creation because companies fail to stimulate customer’s interest in producing quality contributions. These difficulties have evoked the attention of researchers’ and practitioners’ on how to effectively use empowerment technology in online co-creation. In the extant literatures, empowerment technology had mostly been seen a single perspective – a self-design tool kits (i.e., design IT). In contrast to this traditional view, this study highlights the importance of social dimensions of empowerment IT (i.e., social IT) and our experimental study proved that design IT and social IT are significantly different. In particular, this research proposes a joint view of empowerment theory and self-determination theory to analyze why people participate in co-creation and pay for co-designed products and services. Our results suggest that social IT has increases intrinsic and extrinsic motivations by creating a sense of relatedness to the company and to other users. In contrast, design IT increases intrinsic motivation and extrinsic meaning by improving people’s sense of self-efficacy and company relatedness. Customers’ co-creation intentions were influenced by intrinsic motivation, extrinsic meaning, and self-efficacy, while willingness to pay is only influenced by extrinsic meaning.

With the rise of internet and social networks, businesses are increasingly becoming dependent on cumulative knowledge of customers to get access to external ideas and solutions in recent years. IT tools have been seen as consumer empowerment instruments to engage customers and encourage them to participate in service and product development processes. However, there is a high failure rate of online B2C co-creation because companies fail to stimulate customer’s interest in producing quality contributions. These difficulties have evoked the attention of researchers’ and practitioners’ on how to effectively use empowerment technology in online co-creation. In the extant literatures, empowerment technology had mostly been seen a single perspective – a self-design tool kits (i.e., design IT). In contrast to this traditional view, this study highlights the importance of social dimensions of empowerment IT (i.e., social IT) and our experimental study proved that design IT and social IT are significantly different. In particular, this research proposes a joint view of empowerment theory and self-determination theory to analyze why people participate in co-creation and pay for co-designed products and services. Our results suggest that social IT has increases intrinsic and extrinsic motivations by creating a sense of relatedness to the company and to other users. In contrast, design IT increases intrinsic motivation and extrinsic meaning by improving people’s sense of self-efficacy and company relatedness. Customers’ co-creation intentions were influenced by intrinsic motivation, extrinsic meaning, and self-efficacy, while willingness to pay is only influenced by extrinsic meaning.

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