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The purpose of this study is to investigate how different types of contribution awareness information influence knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence.

The independent variable of this experimental study was contribution awareness information with four levels: self-contribution, absolute social-comparison, relative social-comparison and control. The dependent variables were self-rated knowledge sharing motivation measured on a six-point Likert scale and contribution persistence measured by number of contributions. A total of 182 knowledge workers voluntarily completed online participation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four intervention groups.

The study found that the self-contribution group outperformed the other groups in both knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence; this observation was significant compared with the absolute social-comparison and control groups. The impact of self-contribution frequency information was stronger for contribution persistence than for self-evaluated knowledge sharing motivation, highlighting the gap between perception and behavior. It is also noteworthy that comparative information negatively influenced knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence, implying that social comparison played a role in priming individuals to focus on dissimilarities between the comparison target and themselves.

This study provides behavior-based evidence supporting social comparison theory and the selective accessibility model in the field of knowledge sharing outside of an organizational context. This study also offers the practical advice that participants’ knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence, especially newly joining members, can be increased by the inclusion of self-contribution information and conversely decreased by comparative information.

The goals of this study are to evaluate the factorial validity of a measurement model of cultural heritage portals and to test the model's invariance as it relates to user satisfaction.

A measurement model was created by adapting multiple existing scales with the hypothesis that overall user satisfaction with a cultural heritage portal consists of satisfaction with data quality, satisfaction with service quality and users' technology acceptance. The validity of the indicator variables of each of the adapted scales was tested, then a combined measurement model was tested, via confirmatory factor analysis. The re-specified measurement model was then tested for invariance between two age groups with increasingly stringent criteria.

The analyses indicated that the three frameworks complement each other in assessing the factors influencing user satisfaction, especially in cultural heritage portals, and that the factor structure is the same across age groups, confirming the findings of the recent online trend: some of the key internet activities such as information consumption are becoming uniformly popular across different age groups.

Considering that it is not usual for non-profit organisations to assess customer satisfaction, and there exists limited literature examining factors influencing user satisfaction with cultural heritage portals, especially with different age populations, the findings of the current study provide a valuable contribution to the literature. The study also benefits practitioners in the field by providing a framework to assess user satisfaction with existing cultural heritage portals and/or to build cultural heritage portals in a way that increases users' satisfaction, regardless of age group.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of system-generated visual feedback and continued contribution on individuals’ motivation to share knowledge in a crowdsourcing environment.

An experimental setting was designed to investigate participants’ motivation to contribute knowledge in a crowdsourcing environment. Responses from a total of 101 participants were analyzed. The independent variables were visual feedback and time. The dependent variable was the participants’ self-expressed willingness to further contribute in the experimental knowledge-sharing activity.

A significant main effect of time was found, showing overall gains in the mean willingness to participate over time. It was also found that the mean willingness of the control and top assimilation groups were higher than the mean willingness of the rank contrast and status groups. The mean difference obtained for the control group was mainly during the first half of the knowledge-sharing tasks, while the mean difference obtained for the top assimilation group was mainly during the second half of the knowledge-sharing tasks.

This study contributes to the literature related to motivation in knowledge sharing by providing theory-based, empirical evidence of the potential for external interventions to improve willingness to contribute and sustain knowledge sharing. The findings additionally provide practical implications for motivating and sustaining knowledge sharing.