Godefroy Dang Nguyen

Are Streaming and Other Music Consumption Modes Substitutes or Complements

From a representative survey of 2,000 French individuals, we study whether consumption of music through streaming services, such as Spotify or YouTube, is a substitute or a complement to other music consumption modes such as CD, pay-downloads or live music. Controlling for the taste for music, various socio-demographic characteristics, as well as for the usual determinants of music consumption either offline (radio, TV, friends/relatives) or online (online recommendations, social networks), our results show that consuming music as streams (where the consumer does not possess the music but has just an access to it) has no significant effect on CDs purchase but is a complement to buying music online. The use of streaming services also affects positively live music attendance, but only for national or international artists who are more likely to be available on streaming services. These results suggest that a new music ecosystem is emerging in which the “possession” as well as the “access” modes of recorded music consumption might coexist.

Do open online projects create social norms

Abstract While most scholars agree that prosocial motivations have replaced monetary incentives in open online communities, they often argue that these other-regarding motivations are based on exogenous preferences, and are the prerogative of the contributors. With the help of the French Wikimédia Foundation, we have been able to challenge this claim by questioning a large sample (n=13000) of Wikipedia users. After having expressed their feelings about Wikipédia, these users were invited to play a Dictator Game. As a result we show that a large proportion of respondents, in particular the simple users, chose the equal split in the DG (66% of the sample). This suggests that a majority of participants, mainly the users of, rather than the contributors to Wikipedia, adhere to a social norm of sharing. Investigating the determinants of this result, we prove that an involvement measured by usages (intensity and variety), as well as attachment to, and time spent on Wikipedia, are correlated with the choice of the 50/50 split in the DG. The method of instrumental variables gives an indication that adherence to the social norm of sharing is endogenously determined by the involvement in an open online community. Our result highlights the importance of interactions with the institutional and technical framework of the community in the construction of an adherence to the norm, in particular for those who seem to play a very passive role in the collective building of the Wikipedia project, the users.This paper shows the existence of a strong social norm in a massive online public good community, demonstrated by the choice of the equal split in the Dictator Game (DG). With the help of the French Wikimedia Foundation, we questioned a large sample of Wikipedia users and contributors on their practices, and then asked them to play the DG. The results are statistically significant and show how people respect (or not) social norms. They also show that both contributors and non-contributors adhere to a norm that it is correlated with their “patronage” of Wikipedia. Regular, long-term users, who declare a strong attachment to the platform, are more likely to choose the 50/50 split in the DG. The method of instrumental variables was used to identify a causal relationship between the equal split and involvement in Wikipedia. This did not invalidate the hypothesis that choosing an equal split in the DG is driven by the level of involvement in Wikipedia.