-Members will only stay in a group as long as they find the others useful in helping them achieve their personal goals

-Members want to be valued for their time with substantive benefits

-It's important to give members benefits as soon as possible to keep their commitment high

Achieving Need Based Commitment 

This type of commitment is based on the benefits one will receive from being part of a specific community

Kenyon College

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Committed members of an online community are more likely to provide meaningful content valued by other users. Commitment also serves as an essential foundation for behavior regulation. Different types of commitment (e.g., affective, need-based, and normative) can be cultivated within online communities, and the optimal type to encourage depends on the specific vision and goals of the community.

Encouraging Commitment to Online Communities

Kraut, Robert E., and Paul Resnick. Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design. MIT Press, 2012.

Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design (Kraut and Resnick)

- The feeling of being part of the community and helping fulfill its mission

- This type of commitment is more effective at keeping people in the community. This is because the people are committed to the community itself and not so much the individual members.

Identity-Based Affective Commitment

- Members feel close to the other individual members of the group, as opposed to the community as a whole

- This type of commitment is more susceptible to member turnover


Interpersonal-Based Affective Commitment

Need-based Commitment 

- Members feel a need to serve the community “based on feelings of rightness or obligations to the group”

- Members feel a need to be loyal and act on its behalf

Normative-based Commitment

An academic article on online communities through a behavioral economics lens 

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