Determinants of Helping Behaviors in Online Groups: A Conceptual Model

Abstract

There are at currently least 8 million unique users of over 50,000 online groups on the Internet. These are forums where individuals discuss and share information about a wide spectrum of workrelated and non-work topics using email or the web. These forums have a high level of message traffic- over 150 million messages were posted in Usenet groups in 2000 (Smith 2002). The occurrence of helping behavior observed in these online groups raises several questions. What are the characteristics of helping- what kind of help do people provide online? What are factors influencing helping? What are the mechanisms supporting such prosocial behavior and how do features of the context of online groups enable or inhibit helping behavior? This paper draws on prior work on online groups, literature on helping in interpersonal situations, and research on the dynamics of groups to propose a model explaining the helping behavior of participants. It highlights that the size of the group and the diversity of the group have complex effects on the nature of helping behavior. It suggests that the creation of ancillary resources (such as FAQs and repositories of content supplementing the site) influences the nature of helping behaviors –information exchange is inhibited while knowledge creation and sharing is enhanced. This paper also highlights the unrecognized value of occasional participants and passive participants in influencing behavior and the complementarity in the roles of central and peripheral participants.