Article ID: | iaor20123011 |
Volume: | 23 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 247 |
End Page Number: | 259 |
Publication Date: | Mar 2012 |
Journal: | Information Systems Research |
Authors: | Whinston Andrew B, Xia Mu, Huang Yun, Duan Wenjing |
Keywords: | knowledge management, computers: data-structure |
Peer‐to‐peer sharing networks have seen explosive growth recently. In these networks, sharing files is completely voluntary, and there is no financial reward for users to contribute. However, many users continue to share despite the massive free‐riding by others. Using a large‐scale data set of individual activities in a peer‐to‐peer music‐sharing network, we seek to understand users' continued‐sharing behavior as a private contribution to a public good. We find that the more benefit users ‘get from’ the network, in the form of