Motivations of Wikipedia content contributors

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010年04月01日1 Get rights and content

Abstract

Rapidly developing web technologies have increased the prevalence of user-generated Internet content. Of the many websites with user-generated content on the Internet, one of the most renowned is Wikipedia, which is the largest multilingual free-content encyclopedia written by users collaboratively. Nevertheless, although contributing to Wikipedia takes time and knowledge, contributors are rarely compensated. As a result, there is a need to understand why individuals share their knowledge in Wikipedia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of both conventional and self concept-based motivation on individual willingness to share knowledge in Wikipedia. After performing an online questionnaire survey, SEM was applied to assess the proposed model and hypotheses. The analytical results showed that internal self-concept motivation is the key motivation for knowledge sharing on Wikipedia.

Introduction

Rapidly developing web technologies have increased the prevalence of user-generated content on the Internet. User-generated content provides a new way to create, manipulate, and consume information online (Nov, 2007). For instance, Wikipedia, one of the most renowned user-generated content applications and the largest multilingual free-content encyclopedia in the world, is written by users collaboratively. Wikipedians (i.e., individuals who write and edit Wikipedia) are generally allowed to edit Wikipedia content by sharing their knowledge in relevant entries. Accordingly, anyone with Internet access can search and browse Wikipedia entries for free. Compared to conventional websites, in which content is provided by the vendor, the emergence of user-generated content has indeed changed conventional views of how information is created, shared, and used.
Wikipedia has attracted growing academic attention due to its popularity and unconventional operating mechanisms (Royal & Kapila, 2009). Of these rising issues about Wikipedia, the content reliability is a widely discussed topic in prior research (Korfiatis et al., 2006, Waters, 2007). Although the completeness and accuracy of Wikipedia content is important, content reliability is not the focus of this study. This study analyzed the motivation to engage in knowledge sharing in Wikipedia. Notably, because Wikipedians participate in editing Wikipedia content by sharing their knowledge about a specific entry, they may lose the ownership and associated benefits of their knowledge (Gray, 2001). Additionally, although knowledge sharing in Wikipedia takes time and effort, Wikipedians rarely obtain equivalent returns. Thus, important issues are the profiles and motivations of individuals who are likely to participate in knowledge sharing in Wikipedia.
Recently, an increasing number of studies have been done on individuals’ participation behavior in Wikipedia. For instance, Pfeil, Zaphiris, and Ang (2006) compared the influence of cultural differences between several national Wikipedians. Nov (2007) compared the motivations associated with high and low levels of contribution to Wikipedia. Amichai-Hamburger, Lamdan, Madiel, and Hayat (2008) focused on the personal characteristics of Wikipedia participants. Although all of these studies provide insight into the characteristics and contribution behavior of Wikipedians, little empirical, quantitative data has been compiled to determine what motivates individuals to share knowledge in Wikipedia. Even the empirical study by Nov (2007) reported only a simple correlation coefficient between the motivations of contributors and the time they spent contributing to Wikipedia. His study did not construct an integrated motivation model and could not really answer what is the most influencing motivation factor on the knowledge sharing behavior in Wikipedia.
Considering the content of Wikipedia, this study assumed that individual participation in Wikipedia can be considered knowledge sharing behavior since individuals generally engage by contributing what they know to relevant entries. Studies of knowledge sharing typically apply motivational theory to interpret individual knowledge-sharing behavior. Many prior studies confirm that motivation has a key role in knowledge sharing intention and behavior (Bock et al., 2005, Cabrera et al., 2006, Constant et al., 1996, Hall, 2001). However, Leonard, Beauvais, and Scholl (1999) argued that conventional motivational theory cannot fully explain the diversity of observed behaviors. Therefore, Leonard et al. (1999) suggested that self-concept-based motivation should be included in the measure of motivation. Thus, both conventional and self-concept-based motivations are adopted and measured in this study to explore their possible effects on individual knowledge-sharing behavior in Wikipedia.
The aim of this study was to evaluate how motivation affects individual knowledge sharing behavior in Wikipedia. The primary research issues were the following: whether conventional and self-concept-based motivations adequately explain individual knowledge sharing behavior in Wikipedia, whether individual motivation for sharing differs from that in general virtual communities, and the factors that motivate Wikipedians to contribute knowledge.

Section snippets

Literature review and hypotheses development

Research on knowledge sharing in the organizational context has mounted steadily in recent decades. Many empirical studies have highlighted the various factors that affect individual intention to share knowledge (e.g., Bock and Kim, 2002, Bock et al., 2005, Kankanhalli et al., 2005). Of these factors, motivation theory was a widely discussed perspective in prior knowledge sharing research. Many recent knowledge sharing studies have also applied this perspective to explore individual sharing

Instrument design

Fig. 1 shows the research model developed according to the above literature. Based on the proposed research model, an online questionnaire survey was conducted. The questionnaire included both conventional and self-concept-based motivation measures as well as knowledge sharing behavior measures. Specifically, the items for measuring intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were mainly adapted from previous studies and modified for use in the knowledge sharing context. Three items were used

Reliabilities and validation

Since all samples in this study were collected simultaneously, and all samples used the same self-reported instrument, common method bias test was applied. The Harmon’s one-factor test was conducted (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). As Table 1 shows, five factors with eigenvalues above 1 were extracted, which together accounted for 71.5% of the variance. The first factor accounted for 28.7% of the variance. Since no single factor emerged, and since no single general factor accounted for most of the

Conclusions

The aim of this study was to examine the knowledge sharing behavior of Wikipedians from a motivational perspective. Both conventional and self-concept-based motivation were adopted and measured in this study. After performing an online questionnaire survey, SEM was applied to assess the proposed model and hypotheses. The analytical results implied that, compared to the influence of conventional motivation, self-concept-based motivation has a greater influence on individual knowledge-sharing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for constructive and helpful comments. The authors would also thank the National Science Council, Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under contract NSC 98-2410-H-004-189.

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