Different or Alike? Motivation to Participate and Social Influence in Online Discussions by Age and Gender

Sahab, Sofia and Haqbeen, Jawad and Ito, Takayuki (2021) Different or Alike? Motivation to Participate and Social Influence in Online Discussions by Age and Gender. CITIES 20.50 – Creating Habitats for the 3rd Millennium: Smart – Sustainable – Climate Neutral. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2021, 26th International Conference on Urban Development, Regional Planning and Information Society. pp. 281-289. ISSN 2521-3938

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Abstract

While the use of incentive mechanismsto stimulate efficient communication and collaboration among individuals in online platforms, groups and communities has been widely documented and discussed, comparatively little is known about the influence of age and gender on the motives for participation in these platforms and how responses may vary based on these personal attributes in less developed countries like Afghanistan. In this paper, we examined if the age and gender of the respondents affect the kinds of incentivesthat stimulatetheir effective participation in online discussions andifsuch online discussions have a social influence on participantspresented with such incentives. To this end, we firstrun an idea contest project, using a real word online discussion forumcalled D-Agree in collaboration with Kabul Municipality (KM). Weincorporateddifferent incentive schemes which yielded 3,892 respondents/participants whocumulatively exchanged14,587 opinions and responses on the platform. This enabled us to conduct a post discussion survey, usingSurveyMonkey where 201 respondents participated. We demonstrate that financial (e.g. monetary reward) and social (e.g. fulfilling the desire to learn and improve one's abilities, knowledge and experience)motives consistently outperform all other incentivesas motivators of participation in Afghanistan. The results of this work demonstrate that males and females are influenced by similar incentives to participate in online discussions. As for the social influence of participating in online discussions, the results show that respondents were affected from a moderate level to a great deal, butwith no significant differences based on age and gender. The output of this research might open a new direction in the study of social influence based on incentive mechanisms. This could be used as a planning tool to stimulate participation in forums/platforms for crowdsourcing.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Idea contest, Civic engagement, Extrinsic motivation, Online discussion, Online participation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Depositing User:	REAL CORP Administrator
Date Deposited:	27 Sep 2021 12:04
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2021 17:07
URI:	http://repository.corp.at/id/eprint/756

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