The never-ending book: the role of new material and peer feedback in user-generated content production

Abstract

This paper studies the determinants of the voluntary provision of user-generated (online) content. Using data from the largest fanfiction website, we find that writers respond differently to new original material: writing times increase for the average writer and even more for the elite of prolific writers. We explain this finding with quality concerns. In addition, we find supportive evidence that community feedback encourages first-time contributors to continue publishing. However, for more established writers, community feedback has a rather dampening effect on text lengths and writing times. These effects are more pronounced for more informative community feedback (‘reviews’) than less informative community feedback (‘following’, ‘favoriting’).