In recent years, extensive studies of many interesting aspects of online community dynamics promoted a better understanding of this area. One of the most challenging problems facing builders of online communities is the design of incentive mechanisms that can ensure user participation. However, running online community experiments in the real world is expensive, and requires a great deal of motivation from users.
In this thesis two major approaches are explored: system dynamics modeling and agent-based modeling, to simulate the overall behaviours of participants in online communities. Although these models are developed by using two different methodologies, both of them can provide insights into the user motivation process, incentive mechanism evaluation and community development. The target online community for my study is called Comtella, which is used in several senior Computer Science classes in the Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan. Simulation models for the Comtella online community have been developed and the simulation results are useful to provide future directions for incentive mechanism improvement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-03312008-092730 |
| Date | 01 April 2008 |
| Creators | Mao, Yan |
| Contributors | Soteros, Chris, Osgood, Nathaniel, Ludwig, Simone A., Grassmann, Winfried K., Vassileva, Julita |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-03312008-092730/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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