I was told about participation theory recently so I thought I’d share the 5 principals that need to be clear when enticing particpation. I believe that these theories came about in the context of online or digital particpation principally, but I see them as having broader application, frankly.
The principals come first from Peter Kollock, author of The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace:
- Anticipated Reciprocity – essentially, what do i get in return?
- Increased Recognition – The desire for prestige is one of the key motivations for individuals’ contributions in an online community. Contributions will likely increase if they are visible to the whole community and are credited to the contributor. As a side note, the effects of seemingly trivial markers of recognition (e.g. stars, ranking) are overwhelming.
- Sense of Efficacy – What impact has your participation or contribution had? Individuals may contribute because the act results in a sense that they have had some effect on the community. (Wikipedia is a good example of this)
And then from Yaniv Golan and Ayelet Noff:
- Emotional Safety – a sense of belonging and identifying with the community. Once users become regulars in a community they begin to feel a sense of safety in and identification with the community. (The key here is to get these individuals to become regular users in your community and create a cozy and ”feel good” environment for them.)
- Common Connection – it sounds obvious, but niche communities that are built around a particular connection or cause between members tend to become more cohesive and experience lower percentages of participation inequality.
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Participation is a concept that is as old, as it is fuzzy and wide ranging in its application in various disciplines… economists are particularly confused by the idea – something for nothing just doesn’t compute, thus the notion of social capital, a.o., came into being, just another way of saying kudos, or in the case of online communities – gaining reputation. Wasko and Farja (2005) put the problem thus:
they find that “Surprisingly, contributions occur without regard to expectations of reciprocity from others or high levels of commitment to the network”. Others propose a framework with fourteen factors to understand motivations for contributing to different types of virtual communities (Moore and Serva, 2007)
all of this research might go some way towards explaining why i just posted all of this….
To be famous
To entertain
To belong
To feel good
In cyberspace, I am manifest only when someone “reads” me – so to exist is to reciprocate is to exist – hence also the tendency to “reply all”