User Motivation in Peer Production

Peer production systems often attract larger communities of paid and unpaid volunteers, who contribute to their respective projects. This chapter examines different underlying motivations that fuel these contributions. It thereby takes a tripartite form and summarizes current literature on 1) individual motivations to participate, 2) selection of tasks and 3) participation in peer production as a social practice. In the first two parts, we draw on self-determination theory, which discusses various intrinsic (the joy performing the task itself), extrinsic (rewards such as pay), and internalized extrinsic motives (internalized mores and values). The discussed literature shows that contributors are motivated not by a single motive, but by a whole range of interacting intrinsic, internalized extrinsic and extrinsic motives with different magnitudes. It further shows that peers’ motivation partly determines the type of task they will self-allocate, whereby (internalized) extrinsic motives seem to play a crucial role in impelling individuals to perform mundane tasks. In the third part, we view peer production systems as social practices, which conceptualizes these systems as collectives of contributors with shared general principles, whose lives increasingly become intertwined with these communities. Reviewed literature suggests that motivation may be influenced by factors such as social exposure and institutional frameworks