Participation incentive mechanisms in peer-to-peer subscription systems

Businesses are trying to explore new business opportunities in the newly emerging P2P technology applications. Motivating peer members through incentive mechanisms to supply contributions to the system and controlling free riding are suggested in this paper as important success factors for developing P2P-based business models. We review the psychology and community behavior literature in order to provide an explanation for the reasons why people get motivated to participate in P2P systems and to contribute to the peer community. Motivation can be classified into individual factors and interpersonal factors. Based on these factors, we develop incentive mechanisms that may help to induce peers to contribute and participate more and thus benefit the entire P2P system and community. In particular, we propose the inclusion of the following four features into P2P application environments: (i) contribution-reward mechanism, (ii) individual identity and profile generation, (iii) sub-community building, and (iv) peer recommendations.