Encouraging Commitment
KSE 652 Social Computing Systems Design
Uichin Lee
Oct. 4, 2012
Commitment
• Committed workers will
– help with community activities
– sustain group through problems
– provide content that others value (e.g., answers,
code, edits)
• Goal: making design decisions that influence
whether and how people will become
committed to a community
Commitment
• Commitment to a group can be based on
– Feelings of closeness to other individuals
– Feelings of strong identification with the group or its main
interest
– Feelings of obligation to the group, or even the cost or risk
of leaving the group
• Field theory (by Kurt Lewin)
– Tells that there are forces in people’s environment (or
field) that attract people to a group and keep them loyal
– Ex) principle of proximity; the way in which simply living or
working near people initiates a sense of identity and group
feelings with those nearby
Commitment
• Three types of commitments applicable to online
communities
– Affective commitment: based on feelings of closeness
and attachment to a group or members of the group
– Normative commitment: based on feelings of
rightness or felt obligation to the group
– Need-based (or continuance) commitment: based on
an incentive structure in the group and alternatives
available to members from outside that increase the
net costs of leaving the group
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
• Two bases for the affective commitment
– Identity-based affective commitment: feeling of being part
of the community
• Online community: attached to the purpose or topic
– Bond-based affective commitment: feeling close to
individual members of the group
• Online community: attached to particular members
• Examples: classification of student groups: based on
topics vs. friendship (Prentice, Miller, Lightdale 1994)
– Topics: newspapers, art groups, etc.
– Friendship/bonds: fraternities, eating clubs, etc.
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
• Theory of group cohesiveness (Festinger, Schachter, Back 1950)
– Attractiveness of the group: the main focus of social identity theory—
social category like gender, hobby, etc. (Hogg and Abrams 1988)
– Attractiveness of individuals in the group: preferences and personal
interactions (Lott and Lott 1965)
• People can feel both types of attachment in the same community
•
“Two perspectives are separable processes (in development and maintenance of
groups) either of which might dominate under a given set of circumstances”
(Prentice, Miller, Lightdale 1994)
• These types of commitment have some distinct causes,
consequences, and implications for how designers can encourage
and exploit the two types of commitment
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
Design Claim 1: instilling identity-based attachment
leads people to continue their participation in the
group in the face of membership turnover
• Social identity theory: identification w/ a social group
or category keeps people in a group
• People connected to the group as a whole (or its
purpose) without knowing others in a group
• Their commitment to the group is stable in the face of
turnover in membership (at least in comparison to
bond-based attachment; Abrams, Ando, Hinkle 1998)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
2: identity-based
commitment
Claim
2: identity-based
commitment
makes
makesmore
people
more compliant
than
people
compliant
with normswith
thannorms
does bondsdoescommitment
bonds-based commitment
based
• Comparisons between group norms in commonidentity vs. common-bond online groups
(Postmes 2002)
• Attitudes are more similar in common-identity
groups
• More likely to conform with their group norms
(behavioral measure of compliance to the norms)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
Claim
3: Recruiting
or clustering
those
whowho
are similar
•Design
Design
Claim
3: Recruiting
or clustering
those
are to
similar
each
other into homogeneous
fosters
each
othertointo
homogeneous
groups fostersgroups
identity-based
identity-based
commitment to a community
commitment
to a community
• Similarity can creates identity-based attachment
(Cartwright 1968)
– Member background (e.g., profession, school, locality, race,
occupation, age)
– People even tend to dislike groups whose members are
heterogeneous
• Online community can let users select into homogeneous
subgroups or use statistical techniques to assign people
with similar attributes automatically (e.g., Harper 2007)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
Claim
4: Providing
a collection
of individuals
with a name
other or
•Design
Design
Claim
4: Providing
a collection
of individuals
with or
a name
other that
indicator
that
they areofmembers
a common
group
indicator
they are
members
a commonof
group
increases
their identityincreases
their identity-based
commitment to the community
based
commitment
to the community
• Designer can encourage people to identify with the community (or
subgroups)
– By highlighting members’ common social characteristics
– By drawing boundaries around this category
– Example social category: gender, home town, religion, job, etc.
• Surprisingly, even random labeling with an arbitrary label works (lab
experiment and online)
– Categorizing people with fictional personality traits, team uniforms,
arbitrary group names
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
Claim
5: A5:
name
and tagline
(slogan)
thatarticulate
articulatethe
the shared
shared
•Design
Design
Claim
A name
and tagline
that
interests
a community’s
members
increases
the members’
interests
of aof
community’s
members
increases
the members’
identity-based
identity-based
commitment
to thecommitment
community to the community
• In most online communities, people come to the group based on:
– Shared interest in a particular domain (e.g., perl programming)
– Topic (e.g., autism, greyhound rescue, etc)
– Common cause (e.g., building a free online encyclopedia)
• People value membership: access and share useful info
• Clearly articulated scope with a clever name and tagline:
– Help to define a community’s niche (and differentiate it from others)
– Help potential new members to access whether they fit well
– Help induce identity-based attachment
• Ex) Wikipedia’s slogan: “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
• Creating named subgroups within a larger online community
– Design Claim #6: to increase members’ commitment to the subgroups
 Design
Claim
#6: to
members’
commitment
to the
subgroups
– Design
Claim
#7:increase
to increase
members’
commitment
to the
community
 Design
members’
commitment
as aClaim
whole#7:
---to
asincrease
long as the
subgroups
identity is to
notthe
in community
conflict withas
the larger
community
identity identity is not in conflict with the
a whole
--- as long
as the subgroups
larger community identity
• Designers can actively promote subgroups:
– Subgroup identity can be as powerful as whole-community identity in
eliciting commitment (Zaccaro and Dobbins 1989)
• Goals within a subgroup is particularly useful (e.g., 65% more
ratings with group name/goal, Beenen et al. 2004)
• Goal conflicts may happen: a guild left en mass to play another
game
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
• Increasing identity-based commitment:
– Design Claim #8: by making community fate, goals, or purpose explicit
 Design Claim #8: by making community fate, goals, or purpose explicit
– Design Claim #9: providing members with interdependent tasks
 Design Claim #9: providing members with interdependent tasks
• Common fate, goal, purpose, or task can enhance identity-based
commitment (Sherif et al., 1961)
– Common fate: perception that all members benefit or suffer (Michinov
2004)
– Common goal that a group as a whole can attain (e.g., scores, ratings,
or some tangible outcomes)
– Common purpose: often advocacy communities and productionoriented communities (e.g., OSS, Wikipedia)
– Join tasks are more cohesive and committed to the group; a powerful
way of overcoming animosity among subgroups (if properly used)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(1) Encouraging Identity-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
Highlighting
out-group
(and
competing
Claim
10:10:
Highlighting
anan
out-group
(and
competing
with
increases
members’
identity-based
commitment
with
it) it)
increases
members’
identity-based
commitment
• Encouraging members to attend to group boundaries and
their identification with the group by increasing members’
awareness of a different out-group
• People who define and categorize themselves as members
of a group often compare themselves with those in other
groups (Hogg and Terry 2000)
• In-group vs. out-group:
– WoW: Alliance vs. Horde
– Apache server vs. other web servers
– Wikipedia vs. other encyclopedia (e.g., Britannica)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(2) Bond-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
recruiting
participants
who
have
existing
social
Claim
13:13:
recruiting
participants
who
have
existing
social
tiesties
members
of community
to to
be be
members
of community
Likelihood that a person join a
group in LiveJournal increased
with the number of current
members of that group they were
linked to (Backstrom et al 2006)
Probability
• Recruit members who are already friends or build new friendships
• Group cohesiveness: resistance of a group to disruptive forces; it is
also associated with the strength of the relational bonds among
group members (Lott and Lott 1965)
Number of friends (k)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(2) Bond-based Commitment
• Design Claim 14: facilitating interaction with “friends of
Design
Claim 14: facilitating interaction with “friends of friends”
friends”
• Psychological balance: people who are both friends of a
friend are likely to know and like each other and their
friendship to a common partner is likely to lead to their
becoming friends as well (Curry and Emerson 1970)
LinkedIn’s tool for seeing
friends of friends
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(2) Bond-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
15: displaying
and information
about individual
Claim
15: encouraging
newphotos
friendships
or bonds by displaying
photos
and
theirindividual
recent activities
new
friendships)
andmembers
information
about
members(encouraging
and their recent
activities
• Interpersonal attraction via repeated exposure, similarity, social
interaction, and self-disclosure
• Milgram’s discussion of “familiar stranger”: merely seeing other
people repeatedly may induce personal attachment
• Providing a stream of fresh information about the others enhances
this familiarity effect
Bejeweled game
Facebook news feeds
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(2) Bond-based Commitment
• Design Claims: self-disclosure and social interactions
– #16: Providing opportunities for members to engage in personal conversation
 #16: Providing opportunities for members to engage in personal conversation
– #17: Providing places, spaces, groups, friend feed, and other mechanisms for
 #17:social
Providing
places,(and
spaces,
groups, friend feed, and other mechanisms for
interaction
self-disclosure)
social
interaction
– #18:
Providing(and
userself-disclosure)
profile pages and flexibility in personalizing them
 #18:
Providing
user profile
pages and
flexibility inand
personalizing
them
– #19:
Pseudonym
will increase
self-disclosure
liking
 #19: Pseudonym will increase self-disclosure and liking
• Social interaction is the primary basis for building and maintaining social
bonds (Homans 1958)
• As frequency of interaction increases, their liking for one another also
increases (Festinger 1950); message exchanges in online communities
create liking and trust
• Self-disclosure of personal information (e.g., personal profile) is both
cause and consequence of interpersonal attraction
• People like others about whom they know more, and about whom they
reveal more (Collins and Miller 1994)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
(2) Bond-based Commitment
• Design Claims:


– #20:
Active
self-disclosure
visible
responses
#20:
Active
self-disclosure
withwith
visible
responses
– #21:
highlighting
interpersonal
similarity
#21:
Highlighting
interpersonal
similarity
• Self-disclosure is both cause and
consequence of interpersonal attraction
• People like others about whom they
know more, and about whom they reveal
more (Collins and Miller 1994)
• Disclosure is effective when people know
whom they have disclosed to (e.g., who
read what, guestbook comments)
• People like groups whose focus seems
similar to their own interests and goals
(preferences, attitudes, values)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
Reducing Repelling Forces of Commitment
DesignClaim
Claim22:
22:Large
Largecommunities
communitieswith
withaalarge
largevolume
volumeof
of
• Design
communicationreduce
reducebonds-based
bonds-basedcommitment,
commitment,unless
unlesssome
somemeans
meansof
communication
clustering
communications
is used
of clustering
communications
is used
• Design
DesignClaim
Claim23:
23:Diversity
Diversityof
ofmembers’
members’interest
interestininan
anonline
onlinecommunity
community
can
candrive
driveaway
awaymembers,
members,especially
especiallythose
thosewith
withidentity-based
identity-based
commitment
commitment
• People feel more committed to smaller groups than to larger ones (Carron
and Spink 1995)
• People are able to maintain only a limited number of strong ties (Dunbar
1993): approximately 150
• Social networking sites greatly expanded social circles and reduced the
cost of maintaining weak ties; yet ~ 130 ties
• Due to large group size, each pair may not have enough interactions for
bonds to buildup (lowering bond-based commitment)
• Identity-based commitment is mostly influenced by homogeneity of a
group (common social identity)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Affective Commitment
Reducing Repelling Forces of Commitment
Design Claim
Claim 24:
willwill
reduce
identity-based
•  Design
24:Off-topic
Off-topiccommunication
communication
reduce
identitycommitment,
but increase
bonds-based
commitment
to an onlineto an
based
commitment,
but increase
bonds-based
commitment
online
community
community
Design Claim
Claim 25:
together
cancan
increase
bothboth
bonds•  Design
25:Going
Goingoff-topic
off-topic
together
increase
bondsbased
andidentity-based
identity-based
commitment.
basedcommitment
commitment and
commitment.
•  Design
26:Personalized
Personalizedfilters,
filters,
which
differentially
expose
Design Claim
Claim 26:
which
differentially
expose
members
communicationsthat
that
match
their
personal
interests,
members to
to communications
match
their
personal
interests,
will
will
reduce
the negative
effects
reduce
the negative
effects
(or providing tunable knobs of control)
• Diversity among member interests is the root cause of off-topic
conversations---irrelevant to the main purpose
• Trade-offs: (1) distraction: lowering identity-based commitment vs.
(2) discovering common interests: enhancing interpersonal bonds
• Flexibility: going off-topic together (something becomes on-topic
temporarily)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Normative Commitment
• Feeling that one has obligations to the community, to
be loyal and act on its behalf
• Commitment to the cause/purpose (e.g., advancing
hobby or helping other people)
– Design
Claim
27. Highlighting
a community’s
and
 Design
Claim
27. Highlighting
a community’s
purposepurpose
and successes
successes at achieving that purpose can translate
at achieving
that
purpose canto
translate
members’
members’
commitment
the purpose
intocommitment
normative to
thecommitment
purpose into normative
commitment to the community
to the community
• Others’ normative commitment (e.g., narrative
testimonials)
– Design
Claim
28. Testimonials
people’s
normative
 Design
Claim
28. Testimonials
aboutabout
people’s
normative
commitment
tocommunity
the community
(e.g., obligation
moral obligation
commitment
to the
(e.g., moral
in OSS in
OSS projects)
projects)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Normative Commitment
 Design Claim 29-31: Use shared norm of reciprocity (direct vs.
• Shared norm of reciprocity (direct vs. indirect; tit-for-tat vs. pay it
indirect; tit-for-tat vs. pay-it-forward)
forward)
– Design Claim 29. Priming norms of reciprocity by highlighting concepts
that get people to think of their normative obligations (e.g., using
language such as “reciprocity” “giving back”) --- this works even
unrelated to the context of action (e.g., using religious tones in charity;
Pichon 2007)
– Design Claim 30. Explicitly telling people what they have received from
the community will increase their normative commitment to it.
• Highlighting what individuals have received from a community
• Net benefit score in MovieLens
• Wikipedia: “It stopped being just a website a long time ago. … it becomes an
indispensable part of our daily life”
– Design Claim 31. Highlighting opportunities to return favors to specific
others will increase normative commitment to the community (i.e.,
soliciting/invoking a direct reciprocity norm)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Needs-based Commitment
• Needs-based commitment: attachment to an online
community that depends on the net benefits that people
experience from the community
• According to the needs-based models of social cohesion,
people stay in a group:
– Only as long as they perceive the group and other members as
being attractive and instrumental in fulfilling their personal
goals (Homans 1961)
• When net benefits are positive, people think that they get
sufficient rewards to warrant the time, effort, and
frustration they spend on the community
• People DO care about benefits: low benefit & low cost of
leaving  low commitment
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Needs-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
32. Providing
participants
with
Claim
32. Providing
participants
with experiences
that
experiences that meet their motivations for
meet their motivations for participating in the community
participating in the community
Reasons for joining different types of discussion groups (from Ridings and Gefen, 2004)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Needs-based Commitment
Claim
33.33.
Showing
information
aboutabout
other
•Design
Design
Claim
Showing
information
other communities
in the
same ecological
niche
communities
in the same
ecological
niche (alternatives
needs-based
commitmentcommitment
orreduces
competitors)
reduces needs-based
• As with interpersonal relationships, the net
benefit that people need to achieve to decide to
stay depends on the alternatives or competitors
available
• E.g., employees are less likely to quit their
company when there are fewer equivalent jobs
available
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Needs-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
Making
it difficult
members
Claim
34.34.
Making
it difficult
forfor
members
toto
export
assets
transfer
them
other
members
export
assets
oror
transfer
them
toto
other
members
• Lock-in happens when members have accumulated
community-specific assets (Shapiro and Varian 1999)
• Established customers were less likely to leave
– Status/privilege: e.g., WoW game
– Relationship services: e.g., Facebook friends
– History/reputation: e.g., eBay – worth about 8% of
revenue
– Skills (technical skill of operating a community’s s/w)
1. Affective commitment
2. Normative commitment
3. Need-based commitment
Needs-based Commitment
•Design
Design
Claim
35. Entry
barriers
and opportunities
other opportunities
for to make
Claim
35. Entry
barriers
and other
for members
members to make
community-specific
(even
theydo
are
community-specific
investments
(even if they investments
are merely sunk
costsif that
sunk costs
that do not create valuable assets)
notmerely
create valuable
assets)
• Members’ community-specific investments
that cannot be recouped (e.g., level) when
they leave can generate commitment
 Rational vs. heuristic cost-benefit analysis
• Cognitive dissonance: people need to believe
that their previous investment decisions were good ones, so they
make further choices that could result in justifying the earlier ones
(Festinger 1957)
 People like group more if they
endure a severe initiation
process to join them (Aronson
and Mills 1959), as it is the only
way they can reconcile their
views..
Effect of entry barriers on post-entry contributions to
Movielens (from Drenner, et al, 2008)
Summary
• Affective Commitment
– Identity-based affective commitment: e.g., social identity, group
norms, homogeneous groups, naming, common fate/goal/task,
in vs. outgroups
– Bond-based affective commitment: e.g., leveraging social ties,
social interaction mechanisms, profiles, pseudonyms
– Reducing repelling forces: e.g., large group, diversity, off-topic
• Normative Commitment
– purpose, other's commitment, reciprocity
• Needs-based Commitment
– matching benefits with motivation, competitors, lock-in (sunk
cost)