Do I Belong? Modeling Sense of Virtual Community Among Linux Kernel Contributors

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Trinkenreich, Bianca, Stol, Klaas-Jan, Sarma, Anita, German, Daniel M., Gerosa, Marco A., Steinmacher, Igor
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Trinkenreich, Bianca
Stol, Klaas-Jan
Sarma, Anita
German, Daniel M.
Gerosa, Marco A.
Steinmacher, Igor
author_facet Trinkenreich, Bianca
Stol, Klaas-Jan
Sarma, Anita
German, Daniel M.
Gerosa, Marco A.
Steinmacher, Igor
contents The sense of belonging to a community is a basic human need that impacts an individuals behavior, long-term engagement, and job satisfaction, as revealed by research in disciplines such as psychology, healthcare, and education. Despite much research on how to retain developers in Open Source Software projects and other virtual, peer-production communities, there is a paucity of research investigating what might contribute to a sense of belonging in these communities. To that end, we develop a theoretical model that seeks to understand the link between OSS developer motives and a Sense of Virtual Community. We test the model with a dataset collected in the Linux Kernel developer community, using structural equation modeling techniques. Our results for this case study show that intrinsic motivations - social or hedonic motives - are positively associated with a sense of virtual community, but living in an authoritative country and being paid to contribute can reduce the sense of virtual community. Based on these results, we offer suggestions for open source projects to foster a sense of virtual community, with a view to retaining contributors and improving projects sustainability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2301_06437
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do I Belong? Modeling Sense of Virtual Community Among Linux Kernel Contributors
Trinkenreich, Bianca
Stol, Klaas-Jan
Sarma, Anita
German, Daniel M.
Gerosa, Marco A.
Steinmacher, Igor
Software Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction
The sense of belonging to a community is a basic human need that impacts an individuals behavior, long-term engagement, and job satisfaction, as revealed by research in disciplines such as psychology, healthcare, and education. Despite much research on how to retain developers in Open Source Software projects and other virtual, peer-production communities, there is a paucity of research investigating what might contribute to a sense of belonging in these communities. To that end, we develop a theoretical model that seeks to understand the link between OSS developer motives and a Sense of Virtual Community. We test the model with a dataset collected in the Linux Kernel developer community, using structural equation modeling techniques. Our results for this case study show that intrinsic motivations - social or hedonic motives - are positively associated with a sense of virtual community, but living in an authoritative country and being paid to contribute can reduce the sense of virtual community. Based on these results, we offer suggestions for open source projects to foster a sense of virtual community, with a view to retaining contributors and improving projects sustainability.
title Do I Belong? Modeling Sense of Virtual Community Among Linux Kernel Contributors
topic Software Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06437