2008 INFORMS Annual Meeting INFORMS 08 and 2008 International Conference on Louis vuitton uk Systems ICIS 08 for valuable insights and suggestions. P. Fischbacher. and N. MacKie-Mason. R. Studies show that the phenomenon pers ists in a variety of settings. American Economic Review 90 4 980-994. S. S. Garfikel. Our analysis also considers other motivati ng factors such as re putation or congestion reduction. It is what one does: why people pa Louis Vuitton Outlet and Louis vuitton others in electronic communities of practice. D. in I. some contributors are pure contributors who share files without any downloading activities from the network; while other contributors are mixed contributions who both contribute to and download from the network. co ntributions are provided by about 400 individuals daily in the music sharing ne twork and the network accommodates about 2600 free riders. In such cases. We. R. how much. Public Choice 86 1-2 117-135. and S. In the context of this research. Kandori 1992 suggests that private contributi ons can be maintained among self-interest indi viduals if ??not only are deviators from the desired behavior punished.-G. Moreover. Xia. Espinosa. The free-riding phenomenon is the result of the Tragedy of Commons problem Hardin 1968 : as public goods. P. 2005. An individual. Our analysis provides empirical evidences to show that indirect reciprocity is an important f actor for contribution. J. Individual behavior is little influenced by the presence of contributors who have never downloaded from the network. J. Taken together. A. 2008 Symposium on Statistical Challenges in eCommerce Research SCECR 08 . Individual s who only contribute but never download signal that they do not need in-kind cont ributions from others and. Thaler. then a decrease in on e individual??s contribu tion would affect her neighbors. Tan. Introducing a third dimension in information systems design ?C The case for incentive alignment. and internalized extrinsic factors. Sigmund. R. Social exchange theory. B. etc. Open source software and the ??private-collective?? innovation model: Issues for organization science. K. J. Shah 2006. contributions as predicted by the economic theo ry. contributions o f digital contents could significantly slow down the contributor??s network connection and delay or disrupt software applications that share the same Louis Vuitton UK connection. and M. S. However. C. G. For example. and N. Shah 2006. American Economic Review 90 1 247-264. knowledge self-efficacy Kankanhalli 2006. Extrinsic factors refer to incentives provided by external enviro nments. S. Table 2 shows the correlation matrix for the key variables. 2001. individuals in these networks often infer contributor intention and needs from contributors?? downloading and uploading activities. and other online communities Ba et al. Kandori 1992 suggests that private contributi ons can be maintained among self-interest indi viduals if ??not only are deviators from the desired behavior punished. and R. A. Faraj Louis Vuitton Outlet al. however. and A. ther efore. To control for the influence of an individual??s download needs. Thaler. Roth and John Kagel. and K. Incentives A number of experimental studies find that incentives could increase private contribution to public goods Falkinger et al. 2006. we are able to identify the inner working of social enforcement in the network. Finally. S. 2006 Despite the large number of mo tivation factors identified in prior studies. Sobel. Herbsleb. Fehr. many peer-to-peer networks automati cally track individual c ontribution history and identify frequent contributors. 2001. Rabin. Ghosh. E. Indirect re ciprocity. As pure contributors signal they do not need file sharing or could be employees of viral marketing firms..A. We. in a public goods game without peer punishment. Network cooperation and incentives within online communities. M. Stallaert. 2003. 1992. and R. 2007 using snapshots of network interactions suggest that indirect reciprocity could exist in a variety of virtual communities. Reciprocity is especially important in Louis Vuitton dilemmas where private interests conflict with collective interests Rabin 1993 . Journal of Economic Perspectives 2 3 187-197. Becerra-Ferna ndez and D. O. G. Indirect reciprocity in this case makes individuals behave as ??conditional cooperators?? Ostrom 2000 . we consider our study complements to earlier studies that focus on identifying individual motivations but overlook th e dynamic nature of social networks. We conclude the paper by identifying th e limitations and future research. A measuremen t study of peer-to-peer file sharing systems. L. Available at ssrn abstract=926915. 2004 . However. J. B. J. Bock et al. we have little knowledge on how individuals perceive the social environment and how such perception aff ects their behavior. The labeling transforms one-shot games into repeated games where cooperation can be sustained. American Economic Review 76 4 728?C741. Henrich. Internalized extrin sic factors refer to extrinsic mo tivations that are self-regulated instead of directly imposed by external environments. E. virtual investment communities Gu et al. These motivations include reputation Wasko and Faraj 2005 .. then a decrease in on e individual??s contribu tion would affect her neighbors. K. 2001a. As an individual gains experience with the network. 1999. C. Reci procity or generalized exchange? Structuring of electronic knowledge networks.
