TY - GEN
T1 - Psychological wellbeing as an explanation of user engagement in the lifecycle of online community participation
AU - Wohn, Donghee Yvette
AU - Lampe, Cliff
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2018/1/7
Y1 - 2018/1/7
N2 - This study documents users' changes in psychological wellbeing across the lifecycle of their participation in an online community. Through in-depth interviews with 30 long-term users of Everything2.com, and content analysis of their posts, we found that psychological wellbeing plays a large role in the evolution of how users participate in the community over time. Everything2 is a long-running user-generated content site framed as an open encyclopedia. Results suggested that negative psychological wellbeing, such as loneliness and low self-esteem, fueled initial participation; validation and criticism from other users on one's content motivation continued content contribution; but ultimately feelings of relatedness with the community, unrelated to content contribution, was what retained users. Absence of social connections in the online community, as well as improved wellbeing offline, led to exit.
AB - This study documents users' changes in psychological wellbeing across the lifecycle of their participation in an online community. Through in-depth interviews with 30 long-term users of Everything2.com, and content analysis of their posts, we found that psychological wellbeing plays a large role in the evolution of how users participate in the community over time. Everything2 is a long-running user-generated content site framed as an open encyclopedia. Results suggested that negative psychological wellbeing, such as loneliness and low self-esteem, fueled initial participation; validation and criticism from other users on one's content motivation continued content contribution; but ultimately feelings of relatedness with the community, unrelated to content contribution, was what retained users. Absence of social connections in the online community, as well as improved wellbeing offline, led to exit.
KW - Emotional support
KW - Feedback
KW - Motivation
KW - Online community
KW - Psychological wellbeing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054885651&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85054885651&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3148330.3148351
DO - 10.1145/3148330.3148351
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85054885651
SN - 9781450355629
T3 - Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work
SP - 184
EP - 195
BT - GROUP 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork, GROUP 2018
Y2 - 7 January 2018 through 10 January 2018
ER -