This dissertation studies the behavioral characteristics of participants engaged in information
exchange in the context of online communities. Online communities are
defined as collectives of individuals that use computer mediated communication to
facilitate interaction over a shared purpose and/or objective. It is argued that this
interaction creates externalities, for example, in the form of codified information that
others can use through web search tools. These externalities assemble a virtual form
of social capital, a commonly shared resource. The research objective of this thesis is
to examine how the behavioral tendencies of the participants in online communities
are affected by the way this common resource is formatted, administered and shared.
The dissertation consists of two parts: a theoretical part where the empirical background
and the object of research inquiry is highlighted, and an empirical part which
consists of four empirical studies carried out in the context of three online communities,
namely, Google Answers, Yahoo!Answers and Amazon Online Reviews. The
empirical part of this dissertation starts with a controlled experiment emulating a well
known social dilemma: the public goods game. It provides substance as to whether
and when participants in online communities behave (un) cooperatively. The next two
studies focus on a special case of online communities where participants ask questions
and other participants post answers conditionally on social and monetary incentives.
The results of these two studies confirm that community participants do care about the
contributions of others and engage in incentive compatible behavior. Yahoo!Answers
participants exercise effort in the community by posting answers to questions conditionally
on benefits provided by other participants. The empirical findings show that
contributing participants in an online community receive answers faster, while those
that do not contribute much effort are sanctioned in the form of longer response-time
to their questions. In Google Answers this thesis, interactions can be observed that are based on
monetary rewards (rather than social rewards in the form of a reputation index as in Yahoo Answers). Participants make use of voluntarily awarded payoffs (tips) along with
stated rewards, in order to motivate those that provide answers (answerers) to provide
better quality in their responses. The findings of this study confirm the symmetric effect
between monetary rewards and quality. However, this study also identifies cases
where social norms have a significant effect on response behavior. When participants
seek to get better service with less effort (in terms of total cost), a reputation index
which is constructed by the history of their previous interactions supports such an attempt.
In other words, reputation history influences information sharing behavior in
online communities.
The last chapter of the empirical part focuses on another crucial aspect of information
as a shared resource: Clarity and understandability. The study examines online
product reviews on Amazon.com. The results suggest that participants do care about
the clarity of this codified form of experience which increases a helpfulness index
accordingly.
The thesis overall finds symmetric effects between participation in online communities
and output of interaction, but also identifies the ability of the participants to
interact strategically as they seek to minimize the effort they provide in order to find
the information they seek. The results underline the importance of signaling and quality
evaluation mechanisms as counter-balancing control that can enhance activity on
online communities