XU, Lei, Nian, Tingting and Cabral, Luis (2020) What makes geeks tick? A study of stack overflow careers. Management Science, vol. 66 (n° 2). pp. 587-604.

Abstract

Many online platforms rely on users to voluntarily provide content. What motivates users to contribute content for free however is not well understood. In this paper, we use a revealed preference
approach to show that career concerns play an important role in user contributions to Stack Overflow,
the largest online Q&A community. We investigate how activities that can enhance a user’s reputation
vary before and after the user finds a new job. We contrast this with activities that do not improve a user’s
reputation. After finding a new job, users contribute 23.7% less in reputation-generating activity. By contrast, they reduce their non-reputation-generating activity by only 7.4% after finding a new job. These
findings suggest that users contribute to Stack Overflow in part because they perceive this as a way to
improve future employment prospects. We provide direct evidence against alternative explanations such
as integer constraints, skills mismatch, and dynamic selection effects.