Wikipedia’s unique feature that prompts voluntary knowledge creation makes it relevant
for researchers to examine what motivates editors to contribute to the platform when
there are no obvious compensations that they could receive in exchange of their efforts.
Earlier studies have identified various encouraging factors of Wikipedia participation
(e.g., fun, ideology, community aspect). In this dissertation, I undertook a psychology
perspective and examined the issue with a focus on person-object-environment
paradigm that has not been previously studied within the context of Wikipedia
motivation. This paradigm explains the human behavior as a product of a person’s
interest-oriented relationship with an object and with her/his environment. The aim of
this dissertation was then to investigate motivation to work with Wikipedia (in terms of
willingness to contribute to the articles and production of article measures) in relation to
topic factors (object) and threat exposure (environment). Two laboratory and one
Wikipedia textual analysis studies suggested that general (i.e., topic familiarity and
controversiality) and specific characteristics (i.e., sentiment and psychological content)
of a topic played significant roles in Wikipedia motivation. Specifically, working with
familiar and controversial topics that had sociopolitical references increased
engagement to Wikipedia articles. Results also suggested that Wikipedia community
produced article measures (e.g., longer articles) related to content with both positive
and negative sentiments. A closer examination on psychological content showed that
affective (positive and negative emotion) and drive states (achievement, reward, power,
affiliation and risk) were the best predictors of article production. With regards to threat
exposure, although threat manipulations induced in the forms of mortality salience and
uncertainty salience led to negative mood states, they did not result in any changes in
people’s willingness to work with the articles. Overall, the findings suggest that
Wikipedia motivation was significantly influenced by general familiar and controversial
characteristics of the presented topic as well as positive/negative polarity and specific
psychological orientations of the content. Threat-evoking environmental cues during
Wikipedia use, on the other hand, did not seem to affect the motivation levels. These
results support the human-oriented aspect of Wikipedia platform that is distinctively
fostered by editors’ psychological, social and emotional interests
