Forum Size and Content Contribution per Person: A Field Experiment

Abstract

Promoting contribution of content is a key challenge for platforms that support the collective creation or transfer of knowledge. We study the role of forum size (number of people in a forum) on contribution of content per person with a field experiment on a massive open online course (MOOC). We find that larger forums elicit more contribution per person. The number of questions and other help-seeking threads posted per person was unchanged by size, but replies and other more conversational posts increased sharply. Most of the positive effect of size was in a subset of socially responsive subjects. The implication of social responsiveness driving our results is that the unequal distribution of contribution on online platforms is unlikely to be easily changed: if more contributions are elicited from infrequent contributors, the greatest contributors would contribute even more due to there being more to respond to.

Keywords: online engagement, discussion forums, group size, user-generated content, Massive Open Online Courses, free riding, lurkers, knowledge sharing

JEL Classification: M15