Here is a quick article about the reasons why people participate in communities, based on the work of two communication researchers, Joseph Lampel and Ajay Bhalla (2007). These two researchers found four main sources of motivation : altruism, reciprocity, status affirmation and status seeking.
Altruism
Or the deliberate pursuit of the interests or welfare of others or the public interest (Wikipedia), in this particular case, the community interest. Believe it or not, I truly think some people participate selflessly. (I personally know some and they are not communists 
)
Reciprocity
The community gave you something (a piece of advice, friends, lovers… etc.) and you feel the need to give something back. That’s reciprocity. And that’s a huge motivation key for many other implication techniques (If a restaurant offers you the coffee, you will feel the need to come back… Unless you have no heart. Religions also use this technique to enroll believers. If you do good, you will go to paradise !)
Status affirmation
It’s an identity component of a person who wants to be recognized, categorized, and properly placed on a value scale. If I am an expert in marketing, I will agree to participate in communities which need my skills, in order to confirm to myself and to the world that I am what I think I am.
Status seeking
And if I am not who I would like to be, I will try to evolve and seek a higher rank on a social scale by demonstrating my talents in a community I can help. Professional networks as Viadeo or LinkedIn are a good illustration of these two last factors. Many experts spontaneously participate in these social platforms without any reward expectation but the recognition of their expertise by the community. In fact, we could easily consider this status seeking as one of the basic needs Maslow described in his pyramid : self-esteem and respect by others.
Obviously, these factors are not exclusive and can be part of a specific combination, directly related to your personality.
Source : Lampel J., Bhalla A. (2007), The Role of Status seeking in online Communities : Giving the gift of Experience, Journal of computer-mediated communication, 12.
on Jun 10th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
The Maslow needs are one possible explanation but there is also the “ecological framework” of Bishop (Bishop, J. (2007). Increasing participation in online communities. Computers in Human Behavior 23 (2007))
Bishop’s defines three principles corresponding to the three levels of the ecological framework :
actors are driven by their desires (social, creative, order, vengeance, existential) to perform an action as opposed to satisfy an internal entity, such as a need.
an actor will take into account their existing goals, plans, values, beliefs and interests before taking action based on their desires, which may have made such cognitions dissonant.
an actor will carry out an action based on how they perceive their environment.
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 2:12 am
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on Jul 16th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
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