Motivating cooperation on peer to peer networks

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of free riding on peer-to-peer resource-sharing networks and explores methods for motivating more cooperative user behaviour via an adaptive interface. The paper argues that the free-riding problem is not so much an economic issue as a socio-psychological one due to a paradigm shift the user community is undergoing. Users do not yet understand that they, and all of their peers, are both clients and servers and must therefore be taught new behaviour. Our method stimulates community awareness and highlights the cause and effect relationship between user behaviour and performance (QoS) consequences. Modeling the user's interests, attitude and relationships with other users enables the interface to adapt to the individual's cooperativeness bias and give feedback on current community structure and activity. Feedback is delivered in the form of graphs, animations and informative text.