1. Motivating Contribution:
5 Theories and 35 Design Claims
Paul Resnick
Professor
University of Michigan
School of Information

3. Online communities face challenges
typical of off-line groups
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Community start-up
Recruit, select and socialize members
Encourage commitment
Elicit contribution
Regulate behavior
Coordinate activity
But anonymity, weak ties, high turnover, & lack of
institutionalization make challenges more daunting online

4. Evidence-based Social Design
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Mine the rich empirical and theoretical literatures in
psychology and economics
Develop design claims
– Hypotheses about the effects of social design decisions
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Sometimes directly tested in the online context and
sometimes only extensions of empirically tested
theories developed in offline settings

5. Inspiration
“There is nothing so
practical as a good theory”
“If you want to understand
something, try to change it”
Kurt Lewin

6. Some Theories
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Latane‟s Social Impact Theory
Social Proof
Goal Setting
Intrinsic Motivators
Collective Effort Model

7. The Roles of Theory and Evidence
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Identify Challenges
Generate Solution Ideas
Predict Consequences

8. Roles For Theory
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Identifying Challenges

9. Identifying Challenges
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Economics: Public Goods
– Private provision  underprovision
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Psychology: Social Loafing
– In group contribution setting  less individual effort
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Implications for online communities
– Some valuable tasks won‟t be done
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Support forums: Questions, answers, empathy
Recommender systems: Votes, opinions, comments
Facebook: Invites, accepts, wall posts, pictures
WoW guild: Time, skill development
OSS: Patches, code, translations, documentation
Wikipedia: New articles, facts, copy-editing, cash
– …unless you design for it

10. Wikipedia Stubs & Unassessed Articles
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Many Wikipedia articles haven‟t been assessed for
quality or importance
58% of important ones are of low quality

11. Roles For Theory
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Identifying Challenges
Guide to Where to Look for Solution Opportunities

12. Collective Effort Model:
Guide to Opportunities
individual
performance
individual
effort
individual
utility
group
performance
Adapted from Karau and Williams, 1993
individual
motivation

13. Guide to Opportunities
individual
performance
individual
effort
uniqueness
individual
utility
group
performance
individual
motivation

14. Guide to Opportunities
individual
performance
individual
effort
uniqueness
individual
utility
group
performance
commitment
individual
motivation

15. Guide to Opportunities
individual
performance
individual
effort
uniqueness
Performancecontingent rewards
Task-contingent
rewards
group
performance
commitment
individual
utility
individual
motivation

16. Guide to Opportunities
individual
performance
Performance-contingent
rewards
Intrinsic
Motivators
individual
effort
uniqueness
Task-contingent
rewards
group
performance
commitment
individual
utility
individual
motivation

17. Guide to Opportunities
Persuasive Messages
individual
performance
Performance-contingent
rewards
Intrinsic
Motivators
individual
effort
uniqueness
Task-contingent
rewards
group
performance
commitment
individual
utility
individual
motivation

18. Collective Effort Model++

19. Roles For Theory
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Identifying Challenges
Guide to Where to Look for Solution Opportunities
Predicting Effects: Design Claims
Design Alternative X…
…Leads to Outcome Y…
…Under Conditions Z
– E.g.,
• Coupling goals with specific deadlines leads to increases
in contributions as the deadlines approach
• Group goals elicit contribution most among people who
identify with the group

20. Design Levers
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Community structure
Content, tasks & activities
Selection, sorting & highlighting
External communication
Feedback & rewards
Roles, rules, policies and procedures
Access controls
Presentation and framing

21. Design Claims and
Pattern Languages
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Design pattern: a formal way of documenting a
solution to a design problem in a particular field of
expertise.
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May or may not document the reasons why a problem
exists and why the solution is a good one
Captures the common solutions, but not necessarily
the effective ones
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22. Encouraging Contributions

23. ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE

24. Requests Focus Attention on Needed
Contributions
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Make the list of needed contributions easily visible to
increase the likelihood that the community will provide
them

25. Email Request to Contribute to Movielens
Quadruples Ratings
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In week after email reminder, contributions quadrupled, to ~ 20 ratings/person
from ~5.4

26. SOME ASKS WORK BETTER
THAN OTHERS

27. Ask When They Can Act
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News site with a “Leave a
comment” form at the end of
each article
Fewer than 0.1% leave
comments
Experiment to estimate the
value of explicit requests
– No ask: “Leave a comment”
form at end of article
– Immediate: Pop-up “Leave
a comment” when user
opens article
– Delayed: Pop-up “Leave a
comment” on closing article
Comments by Type of Request
No ask
Immediate
Delayed
0
20
40
60
80
Number of comments
(Wash & Lampe, 2012)
100
120

28. Ask For Something Doable: Intelligent
Task Routing (Cosley, 2007)

29. SuggestBot
Suggestions

30. Suggestions Quadruple Editing Rates

31. Effective Requests
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DC1: Visible list of tasks
DC2: Tools for finding and tracking tasks
DC3: Matching to tasks that interest them

32. Latane's Social Impact Theory
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Power of persuasive attempt
– increases with number (immediacy, importance) of people
asking
• declining marginal rate
– decreases with number of people being asked
• declining marginal rate

33. Chat Room Experiment
“Can you tell me how to
see someone‟s profile”
– 400 Chat rooms
– DV=Time to response
80
Time to respond (seconds)
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70
No name
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30
20
10
0
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People are slower to
respond when others
are present
Diffusion of
responsibility is reduced
when people are called
by name
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Others present
80
Time to respond (seconds)
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No name
70
Name
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Others present
Markey(2000)

34. Systematic vs. Heuristic Processing
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Systematic: decisions people care about
– Gather evidence
– Weigh pros and cons
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Heuristic: routine decisions
– Superficial cues
– Heuristics

35. Social Proof
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Others doing something signals that it's good/valuable

36. Effective Requests
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DC1: Visible list of tasks
DC2: Tools for finding and tracking tasks
DC3: Matching to tasks that interest them
DC4: specific people vs. broadcast
DC5: Simple requests for routine decisions
DC6: Explain benefits for important decisions
DC7 and 8: Fear campaigns  higher
importance, systematic processing
DC9: requests from high status people
DC10 and 11: requests from people you like
(similar, attractive, familiar)
DC12: seeing that others complied

37. Goal Setting Theory
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Goals motivate effort, perseverance & performance
– Trigger for both self-reward (e.g., self-efficacy) & external reward
(e.g., money, reputation, promotion)
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Goals are more effective if
– Specific & challenging rather than easy goals or vague „do your
best‟
– Immediate, with feedback
– People commit selves to the goals – because of
importance, incentives, self-esteem, …
– People envision the specific circumstance & method they will
use to achieve them
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Design claim: Providing members with specific and
highly challenging goals, whether self-set or systemsuggested, increases contribution.

38. Experiment in MovieLens
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Send email to ~900 MovieLens subscribers
– Gave non-specific, do your best goal or specific, numerical
contribution goals

39. Goal Experiment Results
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Results
– Specific, challenging goals increased contribution
– Group assignment increased contributions

40. In-game Goals in WoW
Weekly minutes playing World of Warcraft, by level
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In WoW players receive extra powers each 10levels implicit goal setting
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Ducheneaut, N., et al.(2007). The life and death of online gaming communities: A look
at guilds in world of warcraft. in SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing
systems. San Jose, California, USA.

41. Featured Status in Wikipedia as a
Challenge
Wikipedia edits before and after reaching featured status

42. WikiProjects Use Collaborations of the Week
(COTW) as Time-Delimited Goals
Get designated to good status in a defined
period (e.g., a week or a month)
A COTW announcement in a project page
An example template identifying an article as a COTW
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43. Goal doubles contribution
Edits per person on the
collaboration articles
Self-identified group members
Non self-identified members
Pre-Collaboration
Collaboration
Post-Collaboration
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44. Goal has much larger effect on group
members
Edits per person on the
collaboration articles
Self-identified group members
Non self-identified members
Pre-Collaboration
Collaboration
Post-Collaboration
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45. Goal Setting Design Claims
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DC13: specific and highly challenging goals
DC14: deadlines
DC15: frequent feedback

46. Theories of Intrinsic Motivation
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Social contact
Challenge
Mastery
Competition
Autonomy
...

47. Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation
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DC16: combine contribution with social contact
DC17: immersive experiences
DC18: performance feedback
DC19: systematic quant feedback  verbal feedback
as well
DC20: performance feedback only works if perceived
as sincere
DC21: comparative performance feedback
– DC22: but may create game-like atmosphere

48. Extrinsic Rewards
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Reinforcements are rewards given after a behavior
Incentives are promises given before the behavior to
cause people to produce it
– Reinforcement can lead to incentive if it‟s predictable
– But persistence of behavior is greatest if not predictable
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Form of rewards:
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$
Points
Praise
Reputation
Privileges

49. Reinforcement: Barnstars

50. Enhancing Extrinsic Motivation
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DC23: rewards
DC24: task-contingent rewards for small-discrete tasks
motivate taking on the task, but not effort on them
DC25: rewards  "gaming the system"/manipulation
DC26: non-performance-contingent rewards 
manipulation
DC27: performance-contingent  can prevent
manipulation
DC28: status and privileges  less gaming than material
rewards
DC29: non-transparency  less manipulation

51. Interfering with
Intrinsic Motivation:
Cameron et al 2001
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+  external
reward enhances
intrinsic
motivation
-  external
reward
decreases
intrinsic
motivation
Effect on feelings
of control is key
explanatory
variable

52. Tradeoffs
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DC30: Task-contingent rewards, especially
money, reduce intrinsic motivation
DC31: Pay a lot or don't pay at all

53. Collective Effort Model++

54. Uniqueness & Benefits Experiment
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Email invitations to join a movie rating campaign
Uniqueness
– Unique: We are contacting you because as someone with
fairly unusual tastes, …, your contributions are especially
valuable
– Non-unique: "We are contacting you because as someone
with fairly typical tastes, ……, your contributions are
especially valuable
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Which will lead to more contributions?

55. Emphasizing Uniqueness Increased
Number of Ratings
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H1: Unique condition rated
18% more movies than nonunique condition (means =
20.92 vs. 17.65, p<.05).
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Unique condition rated 40%
more rarely-rated movies than
those in non-unique condition
(means = 1.82 vs.
1.30, p<.05).
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#Ratings
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Nonunique
Unique

56. Expectancy-Value of Group Outcomes
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DC32: Commitment to the group
DC33: Small rather than large group
DC34: Unique contributions to make
DC35: See others' complementary contributions

57. REVIEW

58. The Roles of Theory and Evidence
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•
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Identify Challenges
Generate Solution Ideas
Predict Consequences

59. Theories
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Latane‟s Social Impact Theory
Social Proof
Goal Setting
Intrinsic Motivators
Collective Effort Model

60. Design Levers
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Community structure
Content, tasks & activities
Selection, sorting & highlighting
External communication
Feedback & rewards
Roles, rules, policies and procedures
Access controls
Presentation and framing

61. Other Challenges
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Newcomer Recruitment and Socialization
Enhancing Commitment
Regulating Behavior
Community Startup