Lampe, Cliff, et al. "Motivations to participate in online communities." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. 2010.

Addressing the challenge of motivating users to participate in socio-technical systems, this study focuses on Everything2.com users, applying theoretical perspectives of Uses and Gratifications and Organizational Commitment. The research compares individual and organizational motivations for user participation. Findings indicate that users may continue participating in a site for different reasons than initially drawing them to it. The sense of belonging is crucial for both anonymous and registered users, spanning various types of site uses. Long-term users express greater dissatisfaction with the site compared to anonymous users. The study suggests that social and cognitive factors outweigh usability issues in predicting user contributions to the site.