Are donors and contributors to online epistemic communities the same? A Wikipedia case study[Les donateurs et les contributeurs aux communautés épistémiques en ligne sont-ils les mêmes? Le cas de Wikipédia]

The digital world, allowing the development of large collaborative projects of production of knowledge, has renewed the economic analysis of the (informational) commons. If there is an abundant literature on the motivation(s) of the contributors to join the production of these commons, the research on the universal access to these goods, on the financing of this access (monetary donations), and on the relationship between donating (money) and contributing (content), are scarse. The objective of this article is to help bridging this gap. We rely on a survey administered to the users of the French version of Wikipédia, and their 16,000 usable responses. Our analyses show that contributing and giving are not performed by the same types of people. Giving to the encyclopedia seems to prolong usual generosity practices. Contributing, appears to reflect more an intrinsic interest in the project and its intellectual challenges. Contributors and donors, however, rejoin in their commitment to the project itself.