With the widespread diffusion of the Internet, vibrant and active on-line communities offer a new venue for social capital formation, by strengthening links among people and organizing their contributions to common purposes. Despite this promise, large numbers of on-line communities fail. We apply theories of public goods and social preference from economics, and theories of collective effort and social identity from social psychology to provide guidance to design. We demonstrate the utility of these theories for designing online communities through field experiments, in which we can create a variety of different communities with controlled design parameters. In doing so, we develop techniques to enhance participation in online communities: economic mechanisms, computer algorithms, and user interfaces. We also are in the process of developing new theories of contribution to online communities. See the Community Lab web site.

More ICD in Action:

Trading Agent Design
Trust, Reputation and Recommendation
Incentive-Centered Design for Spam
Market and Information System Design for Collaboration