Social scientists’ data sharing behaviors: Investigating the roles of individual motivations, institutional pressures, and data repositories

The purpose of this study is to locate individual, institutional, and resource factors that influence data sharing behaviors among social scientists. Given the benefits to the social science disciplines in the advancement of scholarship, and the recent data sharing policy changes of funding agencies, it is necessary to determine the factors that support and impede data sharing behaviors. A research model was developed and validated based on the results of a survey of 361 social scientists. The model is informed by theory of planned behavior and institutional theory to map underlying individual motivations, institutional pressures, and availability of resources facilitating social scientists’ data sharing. It was found that social scientists’ data sharing behaviors are mainly driven by personal motivations (i.e., perceived career benefit and risk, perceived effort, and attitude toward data sharing) and perceived normative pressure. Funding agencies’ pressure, journals’ pressure, and availability of data repository were not found to be significant factors in influencing social scientists’ data sharing. This research suggests that personal motivations and norm of data sharing currently support social scientists’ data sharing; however, institutional pressures by funding agencies and journals and data repository need to be further encouraged to better facilitate social scientists’ data sharing behaviors.