Beyond reciprocity: The bystander effect of knowledge response in online knowledge communities

Bei Yan, Lian Jian

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

42 Scopus citations

Abstract

Because new members are important sources of knowledge to online knowledge communities, it is important to retain them after their initial interactions with the community. With a large-scale behavioral dataset collected from a leading online Question and Answer community for programmers, Stack Overflow, we investigated how the community's knowledge responses and social responses to newcomers’ questions affected their subsequent likelihood of knowledge contribution (answering others’ questions) and knowledge seeking (asking more questions). Contrary to the theory of reciprocity, and in line with predictions by the bystander effect, we found that receiving high quality answers negatively influenced new knowledge seekers’ future likelihood of knowledge contribution. Consistent with the social exchange theory, receiving high quality answers positively affected newcomers’ future knowledge seeking behaviors. Social responses (votes to the new members’ questions) were found to have strong positive effects on both newcomers’ future knowledge contribution and seeking behaviors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)9-18
Number of pages10
JournalComputers in Human Behavior
Volume76
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2017

Keywords

  • Bystander effect
  • Community response
  • Online community
  • Online participation
  • Social rewards

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