Predicting Member Productivity and Withdrawal from Pre-Joining Attachments in Online Production Groups

Abstract

Productive and dedicated members are critical to the success of online production communities like Wikipedia. Many communities organize in subgroups where members voluntarily work on projects of shared interest. In this paper, we investigate how members' pre-joining connections with the subgroup predict their productivity and withdrawal after joining. Drawing insights from attachment theories in social psychology, we examine two types of pre-joining connections: textit{identity-based} attachment (how much members' interests were aligned with the subgroup's topics) and textit{bonds-based} attachment (how much members had interacted with other members of the subgroup). Analyses of 79,704 editors in 1,341 WikiProjects show that 1) both identity-based and bonds-based attachment increased editors' post-joining productivity and reduced their likelihood of withdrawal; 2) identity-based attachment had a stronger effect on boosting direct contributions to articles while bonds-based attachment had a stronger effect on increasing article and project coordination, and reducing member withdrawal.

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