An empirical study of the motivations for content contribution and community participation in Wikipedia

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.12.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We differentiate two types of participation behavior in Wikipedia, which are content contribution and community participation.

  • We investigate differential effects of motivations on the two types of behavior.

  • Content contribution is more driven by extrinsically oriented motivations.

  • Community participation is more driven by intrinsically oriented motivations.

Abstract

Internet users’ participation and contributions are critical to the growth of Wikipedia. Based on self-determination theory, this study investigates the impacts of several motivational factors on two different types of user behaviors: content contribution and community participation. The research findings show that content contribution is more often driven by extrinsically oriented motivations, including reciprocity and the need for self-development, while community participation is more often driven by intrinsically oriented motivations, including altruism and a sense of belonging to the community. This paper contributes empirically to the research on Wikipedia, and it has practical implications for open content system development and management.

Introduction

The prevalence of open content on the Internet, which is user-generated digital information produced in an open and collaborative manner, has dramatically increased over time [15]. Open content is defined as “content possible for others to improve and redistribute and/or content that is produced without any consideration of immediate financial reward – often collectively within a virtual community” [14]. Currently, Wikipedia, the largest online open content system, has become a means of knowledge acquisition and knowledge diffusion over the Internet. Over 500 million global users access Wikipedia without needing to pay to access and use the content. Numerous people consider Wikipedia to be an authoritative source of knowledge [52]. Wikipedia is different from traditional encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, which are organized, written, and edited by established scholars. Instead, Internet users develop and maintain the content on Wikipedia on a voluntary basis. Wikipedia users participate in writing encyclopedia articles in a spontaneous manner without the expectation of monetary reward [19], [52].

Encouraging user participation is critical to the sustainability and success of the Wikipedia system. The Wikipedia website provides basic functions for users to write and edit articles. It also includes features of an online community, such as forums, bulletin board systems, and mailing lists, with which users are able to communicate and interact with each other. Users write original articles, edit and improve existing articles, provide quality assurance, participate in policy setting, and engage in community-building and maintenance activities [35]. Thus, there are different types of participative behaviors conducted by Wikipedia users. The first is writing and editing articles, which contributes to the creation and growth of encyclopedia content [19]. The second is community activities, such as answering questions, discussing community issues, taking part in voting and community administration issues, and offering ideas for community development [30], [69]. The second type of behavior is important because voluntary participants develop Wikipedia in a collaborative manner. It is necessary for these participants to be involved in the management and coordination of the development process.

Prior studies of Wikipedia examine how Wikipedia users’ motivations affect their participation and contributions. For example, people may contribute to Wikipedia for both tangible and intangible benefits, such as career development, knowledge learning, personal enhancement, enjoyment, and self-achievement [52], [59], [61]. Some research also reveals the important role of altruism, which is a dominant driver for “Wikipedians” [61]. Social and relational factors, including a sense of belonging and reciprocity, also have a significant impact on Wikipedia [19].

However, these prior studies do not differentiate between the two types of contribution behaviors mentioned above. They mostly focus on participants’ contributions in terms of writing and editing articles. Previous research indicates that members in a virtual community of practice (VCoP) may contribute to the community in multiple ways, such as offering personal knowledge, helping the owner or manager build the community, and/or investing effort in maintaining the health of the community. Participants with different motivations are likely to contribute in different ways [12]. A complicated knowledge base such as Wikipedia requires different Web 2.0 features and functions. Shang et al. [65] find that users of different Web 2.0 features exhibit different motivations for participation. Research on an organization's Wikipedia system also suggests that users contribute in different ways and that their contributing behaviors are driven by different motivations [79].

Users who contribute to Wikipedia consider adding or editing content to be a way to gain knowledge and develop skills [52]. When a user contributes by adding or editing an article, the contribution is immediately visible in the form of digital content on Wikipedia. Constantly adding content to Wikipedia may help a user achieve prestige and recognition in the system because Wikipedia displays the ranking of top contributors for a certain period of time [19]. Thus, the user may be confident that offering content on Wikipedia will result in some tangible form of recognition. However, these contributors may not obtain any direct rewards through community participation, such as responding to posted questions, voting for community issues, or offering ideas for system development. In addition, individuals have more freedom in community activities than in content editing, which is subject to standardized procedures and constraints by the Wikipedia system [65]. We posit that the same motivational factors may exhibit differential effects on content contribution and community participation in Wikipedia. We believe that a systematic investigation of the respective effects of motivational factors is an important step toward a more complete understanding of user motivations and behaviors in Wikipedia.

We draw upon self-determination theory as the theoretical lens to analyze user motivations and their effects on content contribution and community participation behaviors. Based on the basic tenet of the innate human need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, self-determination theory explains human behavior by specifying different categories of motivations: external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation. Although the theory has been adopted to identify various motivational factors and examine their effects on knowledge contribution and participation in online environments [47], [63], no study has revealed the motivational factors and their differential effects on the two different types of contribution behaviors in Wikipedia. We aim to conduct a systematic investigation to address the following research question: How do motivational factors affect content contribution and community participation differentially in the context of Wikipedia? The findings may deepen the understanding of the links between motivations and participative behaviors in Wikipedia and offer practical implications for the development and management of an open content system.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: first, we review self-determination theory and the literature on Wikipedia. Second, we develop a research model and research hypotheses, followed by a research method. We then present the results of our data analyses. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the findings and their theoretical and practical implications.

Section snippets

Wikipedia research

Online encyclopedias have experienced rapid growth in the last ten years. Currently, Wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia, contains millions of articles in over forty different languages, and it has become an important online knowledge repository for Internet users worldwide. In addition, other online encyclopedia systems are also available in different languages and countries. For example, Baidupedia, the largest Chinese online encyclopedia, has over one million articles and is accessed

Research model and hypotheses

Based on self-determination theory, we develop a research model as shown in Fig. 1. The antecedent factors included in the model have been investigated mostly in prior studies of Wikipedia and other types of virtual communities. People are motivated to gain a reputation and recognition by participating in Wikipedia. They also access and gain knowledge in order to develop themselves in the process [52]. The rule of reciprocity, giving back to Wikipedia after attaining knowledge from the system,

Data mollection

We used a Web survey to collect data. The survey method was adopted because the motivational factors investigated in this study are the respondents’ perceptions and beliefs that can only be measured through self-reports. Participative behaviors, i.e., content contribution and community participation, were also measured through respondents’ subjective responses in the survey.

Data were collected from registered members on the Chinese version of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the largest online

Discussions

Wikipedia users’ content contribution and community participation were affected by different motivations. As the results show, content contribution was motivated by reciprocity, self-development, and enjoyment, while community participation was affected by altruism and a sense of belonging.

Regarding our hypotheses about the effects of extrinsically oriented motivation, it is surprising to observe that H1a was not supported. Reputation had no impact on either content contribution or community

Conclusions

This study investigates Wikipedia users’ motivations to participate in and contribute to the system. The research findings indicate that two types of participation behaviors, content contribution and community participation, are driven by different motivations. Motivational factors have differential impacts on content contribution and community participation. This study contributes to the research on Wikipedia by providing a better understanding of users’ behaviors and motivations. The results

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