Kollock (1999, p. 227) outlines three motivations that do not rely on altruistic behavior on the part of the contributor: anticipated reciprocity; increased recognition; and sense of efficacy.
Another motivation, in which Marc Smith mentions in his 1992 thesis Voices from the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons is "Communion"—a "sense of community" as it is referred to in social psychology.
[5] The higher the expectation of reciprocity, the greater the chance of there being high knowledge contribution intent in an online community.
[6] Self-esteem plays such an important role in the need for reciprocity because contributing to online communities can be an ego booster for many types of users.
The more positive feedback contributors get from other members of their community, the closer they may feel to being considered an expert in the knowledge they are sharing.
[8][9] The main takeaways from their conclusion were that they found that experienced users tend to rate more frequently, and motivation for leaving comments is not strongly motivated by pure altruism targeted towards the specific transaction partner, but from self-interest and reciprocity to "warm glow" feeling of contribution.
The following example, from Meyers (1989) harvtxt error: no target: CITEREFMeyers1989 (help) study of the computer underground illustrates the power of reputation.
Amazon.com is a case in point, as all contributors are allowed to create profiles about themselves and as their contributions are measured by the community, their reputation increases.
Displaying photos and information about individual members and their recent activities on social networking websites can promote bonds-based commitment.
This type of community is known as a reputation system, which is a type of collaborative filtering algorithm which attempts to collect, distribute, and aggregate ratings about all users' past behavior within an online community in an effort to strike a balance between the democratic principles of open publishing and maintaining standards of quality.
[15] These systems, like eBay's, promote the idea of trust that relates to expectations of reciprocity which can help increase the sense of reputation for each member.
The participants may therefore be encouraged to manage their online identity in order to make a good impression on the other members of the community.
For example, Reddit is an online social content-aggregation community which serves as a "front page of the Internet" and allows its users to submit content (e.g. text, photos, links, news-articles, blog-posts, music or videos) under sometimes ambiguous usernames.
Studies have shown that increasing the user's sense of efficacy boosts their intrinsic motivation and therefore makes them more likely to stay in an online community.
Positive but constructive and sincere feedbacks also produce similar effects and increase motivation to complete more tasks.
These problems include difficulty of recruiting newcomers, making them stay committed early on, and controlling their possible inappropriate behavior.
Self-discovery may be another motivation[18] as many online-communities allow for feedback on personal beliefs, artistic creations, ideas and the like which may provide grounds to develop new perspectives on the self.
Although there are a number of different social networking platforms available, there exists a large community of people who choose to actively engage on Facebook.
Through participation on online social networks it becomes easier for users to find and communicate with people within their community.
Due to the competitive nature of the job market "[i]t is particularly important for university students to build social capital with the industry".
[22] Since Facebook has a large number of active users it is easier for students to find out about opportunities relating to jobs through their friends online.
Facebook's interface allows users to share content, such as status updates, photos, links, and keep in contact with people they may not be able to see on a day-to-day basis.
Users can also create groups and events through Facebook in order to share information with specific people on the network.
This allows users to keep up to date with things that interest them like music, sports, and promotions from their favorite companies, and share them with their Facebook friends.
The reason for this is because they are able to communicate with others without being face-to-face, and mediums such as chat rooms give a sense of anonymity which make them feel more comfortable when participating in discussions with others.
Studies also show that in order to increase online participation, the contributors must feel unique, useful, and be given challenging and specific goals.
Social loafing claims that when people are involved in a group setting, they tend to not contribute as much and depend on the work of others.
Research has shown that social characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, gender, and age affect users' propensity to participate online.
The effect of socioeconomic status is not found to be strong in all studies (Correa 2010) and (partly) mediated through online skills (Hargittai & Walejko 2008) and self-efficacy.