Gender effects and cooperation styles in the Facebook community: A quasi-experimental assessment

•Online SNS’s provide a rich set for studying cooperation behaviour online.•A social dilemma is used in order to study cooperation styles on Facebook users.•Three cooperation styles are examined: Altruists, free-riders and conditional cooperators.•Attachment to Facebook is measured considering inten...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in human behavior 2015-07, Vol.48, p.44-50
Main Authors: Korfiatis, Nikolaos, Zicari, Roberto, Lytras, Miltiadis D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Facebook
Gender effects
Social dilemmas
VCM
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Summary:•Online SNS’s provide a rich set for studying cooperation behaviour online.•A social dilemma is used in order to study cooperation styles on Facebook users.•Three cooperation styles are examined: Altruists, free-riders and conditional cooperators.•Attachment to Facebook is measured considering intention and intensity of use.•Gender effects are observed for conditional cooperators with high attachment to Facebook. This paper examines gender effects reported in a quasi-experimental implementation of a social dilemma using Facebook profile owners as subjects. By sending personal invitations via Facebook interest groups, we were able to recruit a fairly large number of participants (N=216) who participated in a “one-shot” variation of the Voluntary Contribution Mechanism (VCM). In addition to participating in the social dilemma, participants provided information about their online profile and their attitude towards Facebook. We observed gender effects on the cooperation style of participants who use Facebook frequently in order to communicate not only with friends and family but also with work colleagues and business acquaintances.
ISSN:0747-5632
1873-7692
DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.065