Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention. This is noteworthy for indicating that awards for volunteers can be effective even if they have no impact on the volunteers’ future career opportunities. The awards are purely symbolic, and the status increment they produce is limited to the recipients’ pseudonymous online identities in a community they have just recently joined. The results can be explained by enhanced self-identification with the community, but they are also in line with recent findings on the role of status and reputation, recognition, and evaluation potential in online communities.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2540 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question How do purely symbolic rewards affect volunteer retention within organizations? Sample Trial population and sample selection New editors to the website for a month (excludes bots, institutions, etc) Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description A purely symbolic reward is randomly given to some new contributors to an online platform of volunteers. The award is personally displayed for their website portal and their name is noted on a community-wide website/ listing. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data is all automatically collected via the website activity logs Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>General activity (retention- measured by doing at least something in a month), direct work on articles and extensiveness, indirect community work, </p> Results <p>The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention.</p> Intervention costs Intervention is costless symbolic reward with almost zero administration costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Gallus, J. (2016). 'Fostering Public Good Contributions with Symbolic Awards: A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment at Wikipedia'. Management Science. Citation for use in academic references
