Attention in the Peer Production of User Generated Content - Evidence from 93 Pseudo-Experiments on Wikipedia

Does greater attention from a wider audience generate more productive input?<br>I analyze how salience-driven viewership affects article edits in a highly influential user-generated public good (German-language Wikipedia). I identify the causal effect of more extensive viewership on edits, using data on 15,732 articles and 93 pseudo-experimental shocks. These shocks result from a spillover of attention that originates from advertisements of neighboring articles on Wikipedia's home page. I document three findings: (1) Additional viewership results in additional edits and greater participation; (2) the conversion-rate of salience-driven attention to content production occurs at a ratio of 1000:1; (3) salience-driven users contribute relatively small edits to relatively long articles with a low readership. My results show that attracting salience-driven attention is a powerful way of fostering contributions to collaborative content and helping users to discover editing opportunities. Further findings on users' editing choices warrant attention to the efficient allocation of salience-driven effort.

[1]  Attila Ambrus,et al.  Either or Both Competition: A "Two-Sided" Theory of Advertising with Overlapping Viewerships , 2016 .

[2]  Y. Benkler,et al.  Commons‐based Peer Production and Virtue* , 2006 .

[3]  P. Courty,et al.  Sales, Quantity Surcharge, and Consumer Inattention , 2010, Review of Economics and Statistics.

[4]  Devin G. Pope,et al.  Heuristic Thinking and Limited Attention in the Car Market , 2010 .

[5]  A. Hoffman,et al.  Not All Events are Attended Equally: Toward a Middle-Range Theory of Industry Attention to External Events , 2001 .

[6]  Bo Yang,et al.  Motivating User-Generated Content with Performance Feedback: Evidence from Randomized Field Experiments , 2019, Manag. Sci..

[7]  Brad M. Barber,et al.  All that Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors , 2006 .

[8]  Andrew Caplin,et al.  Revealed Preference, Rational Inattention, and Costly Information Acquisition , 2014 .

[9]  Jeffrey P. Carpenter,et al.  Why volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, image, and incentives , 2010 .

[10]  Jason Ho,et al.  Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content , 2010 .

[11]  Michael E. Kummer,et al.  99 Cent: Price points in e-commerce , 2014, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[12]  Y. Gazitt Not all that glitters is gold , 2005 .

[13]  David I. Laibson,et al.  Costly Information Acquisition: Experimental Analysis of a Boundedly Rational Model , 2006 .

[14]  Stephan Seiler,et al.  Quantifying Spillovers in Open Source Content Production: Evidence from Wikipedia , 2014 .

[15]  Marit Hinnosaar,et al.  Gender Inequality in New Media: Evidence from Wikipedia , 2019, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

[16]  M. Angelucci,et al.  Indirect Effects of an Aid Program: How Do Cash Transfers Affect Ineligibles' Consumption? , 2009 .

[17]  Jana Gallus,et al.  Fostering Public Good Contributions with Symbolic Awards: A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment at Wikipedia , 2017, Manag. Sci..

[18]  Orley Ashenfelter,et al.  Using Mandated Speed Limits to Measure the Value of a Statistical Life , 2002, Journal of Political Economy.

[19]  Peter Kooreman,et al.  The Effects of Lottery Prizes on Winners and Their Neighbors: Evidence from the Dutch Postcode Lottery , 2010, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[20]  Fang Wu,et al.  Crowdsourcing, attention and productivity , 2008, J. Inf. Sci..

[21]  Michael E. Kummer,et al.  Centrality and content creation in networks - The case of economic topics on German wikipedia , 2016, Inf. Econ. Policy.

[22]  J. Tirole,et al.  Some Simple Economics of Open Source , 2002 .

[23]  Reto Foellmi,et al.  Do Professionals Get it Right? Limited Attention and Risk�?Taking Behaviour , 2016 .

[24]  Arun Sundararajan,et al.  Is Oprah Contagious? The Depth of Diffusion of Demand Shocks in a Product Network , 2017, MIS Q..

[25]  Dylan Walker,et al.  Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial of Peer Influence in Networks , 2010, ICIS.

[26]  Filip Matejka,et al.  Attention Discrimination: Theory and Field Experiments with Monitoring Information Acquisition , 2016, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[27]  Paola Manzini,et al.  Competing for Attention: Is the Showiest Also the Best? , 2018 .

[28]  Xavier Gabaix,et al.  A Sparsity-Based Model of Bounded Rationality , 2011 .

[29]  David Strömberg,et al.  News Droughts, News Floods, and U. S. Disaster Relief , 2007 .

[30]  Chaim Fershtman,et al.  Direct and indirect knowledge spillovers: the “social network” of open-source projects , 2011 .

[31]  C. Manski Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem , 1993 .

[32]  Jan U. Becker,et al.  Seeding Strategies for Viral Marketing: An Empirical Comparison , 2011 .

[33]  J. Falkinger,et al.  Limited Attention as a Scarce Resource in Information-Rich Economies , 2008 .

[34]  S. Gifford Limited attention and the role of the venture capitalist , 1997 .