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Economic downturn and volunteering: Do economic crises affect content generation on Wikipedia?

Author

Listed:
  • Kummer, Michael
  • Slivko, Olga
  • Zhang, Michael

Abstract

In this paper, we address the impact of surging unemployment on online public good provision. Specifically, we ask how drastically increased unemployment affects voluntary contributions of content to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. We put together a monthly country-level data set, which combines country specific economic outcomes with data on contributions to the online encyclopedia. As a source of exogenous variation in the economic state we use the fact that European countries were affected by the financial crisis in the US in September 2008 with different intensity. For European countries, we find that the economic downturn is associated with more viewership, which channels higher participation of volunteers in Wikipedia expressed in editing activity and content growth. We provide evidence for increased information search online or online learning as a potential channel of the change in public goods provision, which is a potentially important side effect of economic downturn.

Suggested Citation

  • Kummer, Michael & Slivko, Olga & Zhang, Michael, 2015. "Economic downturn and volunteering: Do economic crises affect content generation on Wikipedia?," ZEW Discussion Papers 15-078, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:15078
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Comino, Stefano & Manenti, Fabio M. & Parisi, Maria Laura, 2007. "From planning to mature: On the success of open source projects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1575-1586, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marit Hinnosaar & Toomas Hinnosaar & Michael E. Kummer & Olga Slivko, 2022. "Externalities in knowledge production: evidence from a randomized field experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 706-733, April.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    public goods; unemployment; online platforms; user generated content;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D29 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Other
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • L17 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Open Source Products and Markets

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