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Differential impacts of social influence on initial and sustained participation in open source software projects

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  • Xuan Yang
  • Xiao Li
  • Daning Hu
  • Harry Jiannan Wang

Abstract

Social networking tools and visible information about developer activities on open source software (OSS) development platforms can leverage developers' social influence to attract more participation from their peers. However, the differential impacts of such social influence on developers' initial and sustained participation behaviors were largely overlooked in previous research. We empirically studied the impacts of two social influence mechanisms—word‐of‐mouth (WOM) and observational learning (OL)—on these two types of participation, using data collected from a large OSS development platform called Open Hub. We found that action (OL) speaks louder than words (WOM) with regard to sustained participation. Moreover, project age positively moderates the impacts of social influence on both types of participation. For projects with a higher average workload, the impacts of OL are reduced on initial participation but are increased on sustained participation. Our study provides a better understanding of how social influence affects OSS developers' participation behaviors. It also offers important practical implications for designing software development platforms that can leverage social influence to attract more initial and sustained participation.

Suggested Citation

  • Xuan Yang & Xiao Li & Daning Hu & Harry Jiannan Wang, 2021. "Differential impacts of social influence on initial and sustained participation in open source software projects," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 72(9), pages 1133-1147, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:72:y:2021:i:9:p:1133-1147
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24481
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    2. Hu, Jin & Hu, Daning & Yang, Xuan & Chau, Michael, 2023. "The impacts of lockdown on open source software contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(10).

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