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American Economic Review Vol. 100 No. 4 2010

Social Comparisons and Contributions to Online Communities: A Field Experiment on MovieLens

Yan Chen1; F. Maxwell Harper2; Joseph A. Konstan2; Sherry Xin Li3

1 School of Information, University of Michigan, 1075 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2112. · 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455. · 3 School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Rd., Richardson, TX 75080.

Abstract

We design a field experiment to explore the use of social comparison to increase contributions to an online community. We find that, after receiving behavioral information about the median user's total number of movie ratings, users below the median demonstrate a 530 percent increase in the number of monthly movie ratings, while those above the median decrease their ratings by 62 percent. When given outcome information about the average user's net benefit score, above-average users mainly engage in activities that help others. Our findings suggest that effective personalized social information can increase the level of public goods provision.

DOI
10.1257/aer.100.4.1358
Volume
100
Issue
4
Pages
1358-1398
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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