Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities

@article{Beenen2004UsingSP,
  title={Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities},
  author={Gerard Beenen and Kimberly S. Ling and Xiaoqing Wang and Klarissa Ting-Ting Chang and Dan Frankowski and Paul Resnick and Robert E. Kraut},
  journal={Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work},
  year={2004}
}
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… 
View on ACM
figshare.com
450 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
30
Background Citations
229
Methods Citations
22
Results Citations
5

Figures and Tables from this paper

450 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities
TLDR
Design principles derived from social psychology theories of social loafing and goal-setting were tested in four field experiments involving members of an online movie recommender community, finding that individuals contributed when they was reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals.
Motivating participation in social computing applications: a user modeling perspective
TLDR
An overview of different approaches to motivate users to participate are presented, based on various theories from the area of social psychology and behavioral economics and involve rewards mechanisms, reputation, open group user modeling, and social visualization.
Social Comparisons and Contributions to Online Communities: A Field Experiment on MovieLens
TLDR
It is found that, after receiving behavioral information about the median user's total number of movie ratings, users below the median demonstrate a 530% increase in the number of monthly film ratings, while those above the median decrease their monthly ratings.
Social Rewarding in Wiki Systems - Motivating the Community
TLDR
This paper implemented a number of methods within the MediaWiki system, where social rewarding criteria are satisfied by generating a ranking of most active members, which aims to meet the needs of users.
Feed me: motivating newcomer contribution in social network sites
TLDR
This work uses server log data from approximately 140,000 newcomers in Facebook to predict long-term sharing based on the experiences the newcomers have in their first two weeks, and finds support for social learning: newcomers who see their friends contributing go on to share more content themselves.
Role Identity Salience and User Participation in Online Communities
TLDR
The effect of online social networking functions on user participation with data collected from a Chinese online community is studied using a differences-in-differences approach and a formal theoretical model is proposed to investigate the equilibrium participation and friend network usage behavior.
Helping hands: design for member-maintained online communities
Online communities provide millions of people every day with information, companionship, support, and fun. These communities need regular maintenance to function. Tasks such as welcoming new members,…
Visualizing Personal Relations in Online Communities
TLDR
A new mechanism for motivating participation in interest-based online communities is proposed, which engages non-contributing members (lurkers) by modeling and visualizing the asymmetrical relations formed when reading, evaluating, or commenting other community members’ contributions.
User Roles and Contribution Patterns in Online Communities: A Managerial Perspective
Online communities are one of the powerful digital sources for businesses to analyze online users’ behavioral data. In this sense, it is important for practitioners to know how to motivate community…
What makes users rate (share, tag, edit...)?: predicting patterns of participation in online communities
TLDR
It is found that general volunteer motivations, pro-social behavioral history, and community-specific motivations predicted both the amount of use and specific types of activities users engaged in after joining the MovieLens community.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 103 REFERENCES
Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities
TLDR
Design principles derived from social psychology theories of social loafing and goal-setting were tested in four field experiments involving members of an online movie recommender community, finding that individuals contributed when they was reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals.
Think different: increasing online community participation using uniqueness and group dissimilarity
TLDR
A field experiment formed discussion communities around an existing movie recommendation web site, manipulating two factors that positively influenced participation and offer a practical success story in applying social science theory to the design of online communities.
Motivation losses in small groups: a social dilemma analysis
Theory developed to account for behavior in social dilemmas—situations in which - the rational pursuit of self-interest can lead to collective disaster—was applied to the analysis of group…
Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration.
Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually. A meta-analysis of 78 studies demonstrates that social loafing is robust…
Social Loafing and Social Facilitation
CHAPTER 12 – Applying Social Psychological Theory to the Problems of Group Work
Social translucence: an approach to designing systems that support social processes
TLDR
A vision of knowledge communities, conversationally based systems that support the creation, management and reuse of knowledge in a social context, is developed and it is suggested that they have three characteristics—visbility, awareness, and accountability—which enable people to draw upon their experience and expertise to structure their interactions with one another.
An Economic Model of User Rating in an Online Recommender System
TLDR
It is found that while economic modeling in this domain requires an initial understanding of user behavior and access to an uncommonly broad set of user survey and behavioral data, it returns significant formal understanding of the activity being modeled.
Testing the contribution of self-evaluation to goal-setting effects.
The social loafing paradigm was used to test the contribution ofself-evaluation to goal-setting effects. If, as E. Locke and G. Latham ( 1990 ) argued, goals lead to improved performance because they…
Is seeing believing?: how recommender system interfaces affect users' opinions
TLDR
Two aspects of recommender system interfaces that may affect users' opinions are studied: the rating scale and the display of predictions at the time users rate items, finding that users rate fairly consistently across rating scales.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...