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A public radio station, for example, provides its services for free to every listener, and it is rational for an individual to enjoy the service without donating money. If everyone does this, however, the public radio station may not be sustained for long, and no one will benefit from it any more, which is obviously irrational for everyone. This situation, in which individually rational decisions lead to a collectively irrational outcome, is called social dilemmas (Kollock, 1998; Komorita & Parks, 1996).
Similar problems can occur in online forums or virtual communities. The value of a virtual community depends on how much useful information is actively shared by the members. The more information is provided by the participants for sharing, the better for everyone in the group. From an individual’s point of view, however, it is more rational to benefit from the information provided by other participants without making one’s own contributions, because no one, including noncontributors, is alienated from the benefit of the group/community. If the majority of participants behave in this way, the information traffic will be substantially reduced, which would lower the value of the community. This special kind of social dilemma is called communication dilemma (Bonacich, 1990).
Many studies so far have been published to address the communication dilemmas in various contexts, and the suggested solutions fall into two categories. The first is to introduce a sanctioning system that gives individuals selective rewards and/or punishments based on their contributions. This solution, despite its merit, is limited in that there must always be an administrator who evaluates individuals’ contributions and can offer rewards (mostly financial) and punishments. It is apparent that this solution is not viable for a purely self-organizing community with no central authorities or administrators. The second approach, on the other hand, focuses on individuals’ motivation rather than on the reward-punishment relations.