User Motivation

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Description

Summary from Blonde 2.0 blog:

"According to Peter Kollock in The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace, there are three major reasons for why users contribute in online communities:

1) Anticipated Reciprocity - A user is motivated to contribute to the community in the expectation that he will receive useful help and information in return. Indeed we have seen such active users receiving more help than lurkers.

2) Increased recognition - individuals want recognition for their contributions. the desire for prestige is one of the key motivations for individuals’ contributions in an online community. Contributions will likely increase if they are visible to the whole community and are credited to the contributor. … the powerful effects of seemingly trivial markers of recognition (e.g. stars, ranking) are overwhelming.

3) Sense of efficacy - Individuals may contribute because the act results in a sense that they have had some effect on the community. Wikipedia is a good example of this."


The Blonde 2.0 blog author adds:

"Yet there are also other elements which can motivate users to become active in online communities:

1) Connections within the community - the more friends a user has within a given community, the more important it becomes for him to participate in. Therefore it’s important for online communities to allow users to form friendships easily and encourage a high level of interaction between users.

2) Emotional Safety - a sense of belonging and identifying with the community. Once users become regulars in a community, just like in any offline community, they stop feeling fearful and begin to feel a sense of safety in and identification with the community. The key here is to get these individuals to become regular users in your community and create a cozy and ”feel good” environment for them.

3) Common emotional connection - niche communities that are built around a particular emotional connection/cause between members tend to become more cohesive and experience lower percentages of participation inequality.

4) Altruism - Yossi Vardi coined the term “Dopamine Over IP” - each user transfers dopamine to another user….by contributing content, a user knows that he will cause pleasure to those who view it and those users that forward this content onwards, know the same." (http://www.blonde2dot0.com/blog/2008/05/21/incentives-in-online-social-communities/)


More Information

  1. The New Tribalism
  2. What's behind the success of Web 2.0: a psychological interpretation