Socio-technical systems, or online communities, often depend on the participation and contributions of large sets of users.  This study examines the case of Everything2.com users from the theoretical perspectives of Uses and Gratifications and organizational commitment to create models of why both anonymous and registered users of the site participate.  We find evidence that users may continue to participate in a site for different reasons than those that led them to the site.  Feelings of belonging to a site are important for both anonymous and registered users across different types of uses.  Social and cognitive factors seem to be more important than issues of usability in predicting contribution to the site.

Cliff Lampe, Rick Wash, Alcides Velasquez, and Elif Ozkaya. “Motivations to Participate in Online Communities.” ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI) (2010).

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Home computer users frequently lack the skills necessary to ensure proper security. Hackers exploit this to control large networks of computers (‘botnets’) that are used for spam, extortion, and fraud. I integrate ideas from psychology and economics to design software that provides incentives that induce better security choices by home computer users.

Rick Wash, “Incentive Design for Home Computer Security.“ Extended Abstract at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Human Interaction 2007 Doctoral Consortium. January 2007.

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