Strategic, metacognitive, and social aspects in resource-oriented knowledge exchange

The increasing use of internet and intranet fosters the possibilities for resource-oriented knowledge exchange in large groups of people working in parallel. However, the individual decision to contribute information to a shared pool builds up a public-goods dilemma, and people are often discouraged from sharing knowledge because of strategic reasons. Additionally, the highly anonymous situation where resource-oriented knowledge exchange takes place could further amplify the tendency to withhold knowledge: this situation provides almost no metaknowledge about the importance of one's information for the others and almost no social cues. In two experiments the effects of metaknowledge and social standards are investigated. Results show that the former influences the quality of the exchanged information, whereas the latter influences the quantity.