Another important behavioral component of UGC is users’ beliefs about the impact
and quality of their contributions. Looking at Chinese government blocks of Wikipedia
as exogenous shocks to the size of content readership,
Zhang and Zhu (2011) show that
the size of readership has a causal effect on contributions. The incentive to contribute
increases with the size of the readership, suggesting that prosocial motivations underlie
contribution decisions. A related factor pertains to a contributor’s beliefs about the qual-
ity of her contribution.
Zhang and Zhu (2006) show that Wikipedia contributors are less
likely to contribute content after their earlier content has been edited or corrected, per-
haps because this feedback suggests to them that their ...