Paper abstract: Open online communities rely on social norms for behavior regulation,
group cohesion, and sustainability. Research on the role of social norms
online has mainly focused on one source of influence at a time, making
it difficult to separate different normative influences and understand
their interactions. In this study, we use the Focus Theory to examine
interactions between several sources of normative influence in a
Wikipedia sub-community: local descriptive norms, local injunctive
norms, and norms imported from similar sub- communities. We find that
exposure to injunctive norms has a stronger effect than descriptive
norms, that the likelihood of performing a behavior is higher when both
injunctive and descriptive norms are congruent, and that conflicting
social norms may negatively impact pro-normative behavior. We
contextualize these findings through member interviews, and discuss
their implications for both future research on normative influence in
online groups and the design of systems that support open collaboration