Analysis of joint provision of public goods in online communities

Online community (OC, or termed as "virtual community") provides a social sphere for people to share their information, knowledge and other resources. It is becoming an unprecedentedly ubiquitous online phenomenon. The contents which are jointly provided by participants are considered as public goods (Kollock, 1999). For public goods provided by collective action, there have been many papers since Olson (1965) and Hardin (1968). The major concern and conclusion are that enough public goods cannot be provided by rational individuals in collective action. This argument is also applicable to OC because OC will collapse if everyone shirks and free rides others. In the attention economy, however, information overloading becomes a major concern as well, and in response many search and recommendation technologies and services were developed in the Internet including OC. In this case, it seems that "too much" rather than "not enough" public goods are provided in OC. Surprisingly, phenomenon indicates that both "not enough" and "too much" are possible, which contradicts the conclusion of traditional literatures. Hence, this study aims to address why both possibilities exist in OC. How are different results realized by interaction behaviors among participants? Theoretically, we addressed where the optimal level of provision and community size lie. Accordingly, possible managerial strategies are discussed and suggested. © 2009 IEEE.