Visualizing reciprocity to motivate participation in an online community

This paper proposes to visualize the relationships among online community members as a feedback that can motivate more active participation and reciprocation among community members. The approach is inspired by a combination of four theories of motivation from social psychology. The effect of the visualization was evaluated in an online community allowing Women in Science and Engineering to share personal stories. The results show that the visualization had a positive awareness effect, but the motivational effect on participation depended upon each individual´s pre-existing attachment to the members in the community and/or to the community as a whole.