Olson’s Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Analysis of Incentives to Contribute in P2P File-sharing Communities

Thierry Pénard, Sylvain Dejean and Raphael Suire ()

Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) from Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS

Abstract: This article aims to examine how the size of file-sharing communities affects their functioning and performance (i.e. their capacity to share content). Olson (1965) argued that small communities are more able to provide collective goods. Using an original database on BitTorrent file-sharing communities, our article finds a positive relationship between the size of a community and the amount of collective goods provided. But, the individual incentives to contribute slightly decrease with community size. These results seem to indicate that Peer to Peer file-sharing communities provide a pure (non rival) public good. We also show that specialized communities are more efficient than general communities to promote cooperative behavior. Finally, the rules designed by the administrators of these communities play an active role to manage voluntary contributions and improve file-sharing performance.

Keywords: Olson’s paradox; collective goods; Peer-to-Peer; File-sharing; community (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 K42 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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