An Empirical Analysis of Users Collaboration in Online Game Community

Abstract

This study examines users behavior and characteristics under the scheme of virtual communities and further investigates the influence of utility achievability. Using random sample data from an online game company, we find that the users willingness to participate in virtual teams increases as users purchase virtual items more frequently. However, we also show that, when rewards from team tasks is equally distributed regardless of the contribution of each user, the users who can contribute more may be discouraged to participate in the collaboration in the community. Moreover, gender difference has heterogeneous impacts when participating in virtual teams. We find that male users join in virtual teams less frequently than female users do whereas male users who put more importance on utility take part in virtual teams. Lastly, experienced users refrain from participating in virtual teams. Also, they tend not to join in virtual teams although they have a chance to obtain utility. These results suggest that companies who run virtual communities should encourage users to purchase virtual items and participate in more teams by providing carefully designed reward allocation scheme with considering the characteristics and behavior of users.