Commit: Online Groups with Participation Commitments

In spite of efforts to increase participation, many online groups struggle to survive past the initial days, as members leave and activity atrophies. We argue that a main assumption of online group design -- that groups ask nothing of their members beyond lurking -- may be preventing many of these groups from sustaining a critical mass of participation. In this paper, we explore an alternative commitment design for online groups, which requires that all members commit at regular intervals to participating, as a condition of remaining in the group. We instantiate this approach in a mobile group chat platform called Commit, and perform a field study comparing commitment against a control condition of social psychological nudges with N=57 participants over three weeks. Commitment doubled the number of contributions versus the control condition, and resulted in 87% (vs. 19%) of participants remaining active by the third week. Participants reported that commitment provided safe cover for them to post even when they were nervous. Through this work, we argue that more effortful, not less effortful, membership may support many online groups.