Attention in the Peer Production of User Generated Content - Evidence from 93 Pseudo-Experiments on Wikipedia

Abstract

Does greater attention from a wider audience generate more productive input?
I analyze how salience-driven viewership affects article edits in a highly influential user-generated public good (German-language Wikipedia). I identify the causal effect of more extensive viewership on edits, using data on 15,732 articles and 93 pseudo-experimental shocks. These shocks result from a spillover of attention that originates from advertisements of neighboring articles on Wikipedia's home page. I document three findings: (1) Additional viewership results in additional edits and greater participation; (2) the conversion-rate of salience-driven attention to content production occurs at a ratio of 1000:1; (3) salience-driven users contribute relatively small edits to relatively long articles with a low readership. My results show that attracting salience-driven attention is a powerful way of fostering contributions to collaborative content and helping users to discover editing opportunities. Further findings on users' editing choices warrant attention to the efficient allocation of salience-driven effort.

Keywords: Social Media, Information, Knowledge, Spillovers, Networks, Natural Experiment

JEL Classification: L17, D62, D85, D29