Understanding user participation in online communities: A systematic literature review of empirical studies

Online communities have become a popular and widely studied research topic. As active participation has been acknowledged as essential for the sustainability of the communities, research has focused largely on the most visible participants with the greatest financial value for community providers. However, users can engage with the sites in different ways, which calls for a more diverse classification of participation, instead of a simple active-passive dichotomy. This systematic literature review discusses empirical studies on online community participation. The results indicate that despite the large amount of research conducted on the topic, a theoretical and conceptual framework for user participation remains undefined as most of the research has approached participation in terms of its quantity. The complexity of online participation and its implications for methodology in future studies is discussed.