Community's knowledge need and knowledge sharing in Wikipedia

In practice, showing the community’s need for knowledge (e.g. listing requests for new articles) is used to drive knowledge sharing in Wikipedia. Yet, theoretical understanding of how it influences one’s knowledge sharing is still lacking. The aim of this study is to develop a model of the influence and show that one takes others’ utility into account (utility interdependence).,The proposed model was tested with data collected in a survey of 323 Wikipedia users.,Others’ knowledge need affects one’s perceived forgone benefit of free riding (i.e. a cost of knowledge sharing) and, thereby, increases the intention to share knowledge.,This study contributes to research by identifying utility interdependence in knowledge sharing. For practice, the findings provide empirical support for the general belief that showing others’ knowledge need is useful for promoting sharing.

[1]  S. Schwartz.  Normative Influences on Altruism , 1977 .

[2]  Khai N. Truong,et al.  An examination of daily information needs and sharing opportunities , 2008, CSCW.

[3]  G. Becker,et al.  A Theory of Social Interactions , 1974, Journal of Political Economy.

[4]  I. Ajzen.  The theory of planned behavior , 1991 .

[5]  John Wilson,et al.  Who cares? Toward an integrated theory of volunteer work , 1997 .

[6]  Qinghua Zhu,et al.  Exploring the dynamic contribution behavior of editors in wikis based on time series analysis , 2016, Program.

[7]  Lynette S. Unger,et al.  Altruism as a motivation to volunteer , 1991 .

[8]  Robert Albanese,et al.  Rational Behavior in Groups: The Free-Riding Tendency , 1985 .

[9]  Wei-Tsong Wang,et al.  Knowledge sharing in Wiki communities: An empirical study , 2011, Online Inf. Rev..

[10]  David J. Ketchen,et al.  Addressing Common Method Variance: Guidelines for Survey Research on Information Technology, Operations, and Supply Chain Management , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[11]  Matthew K. O. Lee,et al.  An Investigation into Contribution I-Intention and We-Intention in Open Web-Based Encyclopedia: Roles of Joint Commitment and Mutual Agreement , 2009, ICIS.

[12]  S. Rafaeli,et al.  Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Online Motivational Factors: Incentives for Participation and Contribution in Wikipedia , 2008 .

[13]  R. Bagozzi.  A Field Investigation of Causal Relations among Cognitions, Affect, Intentions, and Behavior , 1982 .

[14]  James J. Lavelle.  What motivates OCB? Insights from the volunteerism literature , 2010 .

[15]  Atreyi Kankanhalli,et al.  Contributing Knowledge to Electronic Knowledge Repositories: An Empirical Investigation , 2005, MIS Q..

[16]  Bernhard Hoisl,et al.  Social Rewarding in Wiki Systems - Motivating the Community , 2009, HCI.

[17]  Bo Xu,et al.  An empirical study of the motivations for content contribution and community participation in Wikipedia , 2015, Inf. Manag..

[18]  Heng-Li Yang,et al.  Understanding knowledge-sharing behaviour in Wikipedia , 2011, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[19]  R. Grant.  Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm,” Strategic Management Journal (17), pp. , 1996 .

[20]  Heng-Li Yang,et al.  Motivations of Wikipedia content contributors , 2010, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[21]  Mary L. Tucker,et al.  Development and Construct Validity of Scores on the Community Service Attitudes Scale , 2000 .

[22]  Aaron D. Shaw,et al.  Mind the skills gap: the role of Internet know-how and gender in differentiated contributions to Wikipedia , 2015 .

[23]  Scott B. MacKenzie,et al.  Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. , 2003, The Journal of applied psychology.

[24]  Mikhil Masli,et al.  Eliciting and focusing geographic volunteer work , 2010, CSCW '10.

[25]  Theodore C. Bergstrom,et al.  Systems of Benevolent Utility Functions , 1999 .

[26]  Alessandro Gabbiadini,et al.  Virtual Users Support Forum: Do Community Members Really Want to Help You? , 2013, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[27]  R. T. Kellogg.  Effects of topic knowledge on the allocation of processing time and cognitive effort to writing processes , 1987, Memory & cognition.

[28]  E. Sober,et al.  Summary of: ‘Unto Others. The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior' , 1998 .

[29]  John C. Harsanyi,et al.  Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking , 1953, Journal of Political Economy.

[30]  John Riedl,et al.  SuggestBot: using intelligent task routing to help people find work in wikipedia , 2007, IUI '07.

[31]  Rena M. Palloff,et al.  Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. , 1999 .

[32]  Hichang Cho,et al.  Testing an integrative theoretical model of knowledge-sharing behavior in the context of Wikipedia , 2010 .

[33]  Hoda Baytiyeh,et al.  Volunteers in Wikipedia: Why the Community Matters , 2010, J. Educ. Technol. Soc..

[34]  Christian Wagner,et al.  The Role of Wiki Technology and Altruism in Collaborative Knowledge Creation , 2009, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[35]  Frances M. T. Brazier,et al.  Exploration of multi-layered knowledge sharing participation: the roles of perceived benefits and costs , 2016, J. Knowl. Manag..

[36]  René Bekkers,et al.  A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy , 2010 .

[37]  Xun Liu.  Empirical Testing of a Theoretical Extension of the Technology Acceptance Model: An Exploratory Study of Educational Wikis , 2010 .

[38]  Heng-Li Yang,et al.  The reasons why people continue editing Wikipedia content – task value confirmation perspective , 2014, Behav. Inf. Technol..

[39]  Gaby Odekerken-Schröder,et al.  Using PLS path modeling for assessing hierarchial construct models: guidelines and impirical illustration , 2009 .

[40]  Matthijs den Besten,et al.  Coordination and Division of Labor in Open Content Communities: The Role of Template Messages in Wikipedia , 2010, 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[41]  Peter C. Fishburn,et al.  LEXICOGRAPHIC ORDERS, UTILITIES AND DECISION RULES: A SURVEY , 1974 .

[42]  Stacey Kuznetsov,et al.  Motivations of contributors to Wikipedia , 2006, CSOC.

[43]  Peter Warr,et al.  Pareto optimal redistribution and private charity , 1982 .

[44]  L. Wheeler,et al.  Model, need, and cost effects in helping behavior. , 1969, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[45]  Viswanath Venkatesh,et al.  Determinants of Perceived Ease of Use: Integrating Control, Intrinsic Motivation, and Emotion into the Technology Acceptance Model , 2000, Inf. Syst. Res..

[46]  Roman Beck,et al.  Untangling knowledge creation and knowledge integration in enterprise wikis , 2015 .