Abstract While most scholars agree that prosocial motivations have replaced monetary incentives in open online communities, they often argue that these other-regarding motivations are based on exogenous preferences, and are the prerogative of the contributors. With the help of the French...

This paper aims at investigating the process of involvement in open online communities producing knowledge, via the link between the first contribution and the level of contribution reached. While most studies look at the career of contribution after the first contribution, we focus on what...