Who Wants to "Share Weather"? The Impacts of Off-Line Interactions on Online Behavior

Previous experience on how individuals share user-generated content through online communities suggests that a larger fraction of the content is created by a strikingly small minority of the users. Findings on communities of widely different character within the wide spectrum of different content types being created online point at the importance of intrinsic motivation for active online participation. On the other hand, the impact of previous interactions, weak ties, and trust, is also acknowledged. This paper investigates how previous interactions off-line might impact individual behavior online. The paper studies a "share weather" network and contributions of different individuals who received benefits in terms of forecasts with the option of voluntarily improving the content of a weather service used by others. The relationship between the amount of previous interactions and the content they contributed is discussed, while borrowing ideas from both social network theory and individual-centered approaches based on uses and gratifications.