Fugelstad, Paul, et al. "What makes users rate (share, tag, edit...)? Predicting patterns of participation in online communities." Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work. 2012.

This research examines factors that predict new user engagement and roles within the MovieLens film recommendation community, analyzing survey responses from nearly 4000 new users and their subsequent activity data from October 2009 to March 2010. Findings indicate that general volunteer motivations, a history of pro-social behavior, and community-specific motivations are significant predictors of both the extent of usage and the kinds of activities users partake in. These insights are valuable for the design and management of online communities, offering guidance on fostering user commitment and participation.