Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia
Abstract
The literature on the private provision of public goods suggests an inverse relationship between incentives to contribute and group size. We find, however, that after an exogenous reduction of group size at Chinese Wikipedia, the nonblocked contributors decrease their contributions by 42.8 percent on average. We attribute the cause to social effects: contributors receive social benefits that increase with both the amount of their contributions and group size, and the shrinking group size weakens these social benefits. Consistent with our explanation, we find that the more contributors value social benefits, the more they reduce their contributions after the block. (JEL H41, L17, L82)
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Defederation might sidestep certain expenses linked to alternative moderation approaches, for instance account requirements or geographic blocks.
“This implies that defederation may avoid some of the costs associated with other moderation techniques such as account requirements or group sanctions like geographic blocks (Hill and Shaw 2021;Zhang and Zhu 2011).”
From The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse (2024) · cites this paper as Zhang and Zhu 2011
Cites
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Falkinger, J., Fehr, E., Gächter, S., & Winter-Ebmer, R. (2000) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.90.1.247 · Cited by 338 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Zhang, X. (., & Zhu, F.
- Affiliations
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HK)
- University of Southern California (US)
- Venue
- American Economic Review
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2011-06-01
- Volume
- 101
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1601-1615
- ISSN
- 0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1979257114
- Cited by
- 499
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 38 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 23 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 70.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Economic Review (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Communication › Wikis in Education and Collaboration
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic Policies and Impacts
- Keywords
- group size, private provision of public goods, free-riding, social benefits, Chinese Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors, social consequences, voluntary contributions, natural experiment
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