Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities

Abstract

Under-contribution is a problem for many online communities. Social psychology theories of social loafing and goal-setting can provide mid-level design principles to address this problem. We tested the design principles in two field experiments. In one, members of an online movie recommender community were reminded of the uniqueness of their contributions and the benefits that follow from them. In the second, they were given a range of individual or group goals for contribution. As predicted by theory, individuals contributed when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals, but other predictions were not borne out. The paper ends with suggestions and challenges for mining social science theories as well as implications for design.

Towards Adaptive Recruitment and Engagement Mechanisms in Social Systems

“…Some other studies have reported the effect of mentioning the benefits of contributing as a motivator, however the results in different studies have been contradictory. Mentioning the value of contributions increased the level of contributions in one study [13], but it decreased the contribution rate in another one [1] .…”

“…-how to socialize newcomers [4], -how to encourage commitment to the community [17,14], -how to leverage the contribution rates [1,11], and -understanding people's motivations to engage in online communities [19].…”

“…Researchers have explored different ways to determine what motivates users to contribute and how to increase their levels of contribution. Previous research projects have mostly drawn from Social Psychology, Sociology and Economics [1,13,9,5,3,18,4] theories. The experimental studies evaluate the impact of engagement mechanisms that embed the principles of the theories.…”

User- and Community-Adaptive Rewards Mechanism for Sustainable Online Community

“…The evaluation of an approach to motivate users to rate movies in MovieLens through sending them email-invitations showed that users seemed to be influenced more by personalized messages emphasizing the uniqueness of their contributions and by those that state a clear goal (e.g. number of movies the user should rate) [1]. It is interesting that personalization seems important and that setting specific goals are more persuasive than general appeals.…”

Strategies and Design Principles to Minimize Negative Side-Effects of Digital Motivation on Teamwork

“…The advances in technology, including mobile and sensing technology, and the increased familiarity of the public with advanced features of Web 2.0, games and social computing have made these techniques possible and acceptable. DM has been used in various application areas including health [5,6], sport [7], sales [8] and education [9,10].…”