Publications
Publications
- 2011
Aligning Collective Production with Demand: Evidence from Wikipedia
Abstract
Economic markets align supply and demand through prices. However, many social phenomena lack pricing to inform producers about consumer demand. This can lead to the over- or under-production of certain goods and services. In this paper, I propose a social mechanism that aligns collective production with demand. I argue that this will occur as long as three conditions are met: first, that consumers attempt to become occasional producers; second, that these attempts are observed by producers who interpret them as signs of unmet demand; and lastly, that producers are willing and able to provide these goods. I test this theory using a large dataset of English-language Wikipedia articles, created by merging information from 185 million records of article contributions with data on article views, quality, and knowledge type. The results are consistent with my theory, suggesting that this social mechanism can take the role of prices in certain markets. This study has implications for the sociology of markets, as it highlights a largely ignored collective action-demand alignment mechanism, and for collective production in organizational and nonorganizational settings such as collective creativity, scientific collaboration, and community production of collective goods, as it identifies an unexpected benefit from consumer contributions.
Keywords
Citation
Gorbatai, Andreea Daniela. "Aligning Collective Production with Demand: Evidence from Wikipedia." 2011.