Learning to Ignore Online Help Requests

Email discussion groups provide a useful way of organizing email communities with a common interest in a certain topic. Emails submitted to the discussion group are sent automatically to each individual member, thereby eliminating the need to send multiple emails. This method may present unexpected difficulties however, when it comes to cooperation between members. An experimental study shows that email requests for help sent through discussion groups received less responses than emails sent individually to members of a group. Furthermore, subscribers to large discussion groups responded less often to help requests, whether they were sent to the group as a whole or to individuals. These results are discussed in terms of the separate roles of social cues and experience on the diffusion of responsibility effect.