Embedding Economic Incentives in Social Networks Shape the Diffusion of Digital Technological Innovation

The digital innovation accompanied by explicit economic incentives have fundamentally changed the process of innovation diffusion. As a representative of digital innovation, NFTs provide a decentralized and secure way to authenticate and trade digital assets, offering the potential for new revenue streams in the digital space. However, current researches about NFTs mainly focus on their transaction networks and community culture, leaving the interplay among diffusion dynamics, economic dynamics, and social constraints on Twitter. By collecting and analyzing NFTs-related tweet dataset, the motivations of retweeters, the information mechanisms behind emojis, and the networked-based diffusion dynamics is systematically investigated. Results indicate that Retweeting is fueled by Freemint and trading information, with the higher economic incentives as a major motivation and some potential organizational tendencies. The diffusion of NFT is primarily driven by a 'Ringed-layered' information mechanism involving individual promoters and speculators. Both the frequency and presentation of content contribute positively to the growth of the retweet network. This study contributes to the innovation diffusion theory with economic incentives embedded.