Customer behavior and adoption · Quantitative quasi-experimental/event-study design resembling regression discontinuity in time: contributor activity is compared in four days before versus five days after exogenous game updates, with heterogeneous treatment effects by platform compe
Online communities on competing platforms: Evidence from game wikis
Johannes Loh, Tobias Kretschmer (2023). Online communities on competing platforms: Evidence from game wikis. Strategic Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3442.
Plain-English take
A stronger platform competitive position is associated with higher activity, primarily through more contributors, which then triggers greater contributions by existing contributors; high-productivity contributors are especially active on the stronger platform. For your marketing: Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
How much weight to give this
4.5/5 Strong design for its specific question
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Quantitative quasi-experimental/event-study design resembling regression discontinuity in time: contributor activity is compared in four days before versus five days after exogenous game updates, with heterogeneous treatment effects by platform competitive position.
13 game-wiki communities on two competing platforms; the study hand-collected game updates and analyzes 443 distinct updates across games, focusing on volunteer contributors, activity, contributor counts, and productivity.
Based on the publisher-described design and comparison; see the article for complete analysis.
Publisher record was fetched directly; full text was not assumed open.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the retrieved publisher record.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Do volunteer online communities create competitive advantage for platforms, and how does platform competitive position affect the extensive and intensive margins of contributor activity?
Design
Quantitative quasi-experimental/event-study design resembling regression discontinuity in time: contributor activity is compared in four days before versus five days after exogenous game updates, with heterogeneous treatment effects by platform competitive position.
Sample and setting
13 game-wiki communities on two competing platforms; the study hand-collected game updates and analyzes 443 distinct updates across games, focusing on volunteer contributors, activity, contributor counts, and productivity.
Reported result
What the study found
A stronger platform competitive position is associated with higher activity, primarily through more contributors, which then triggers greater contributions by existing contributors; high-productivity contributors are especially active on the stronger platform.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The publisher page does not state a limitations section; this is therefore not stated by the publisher page fetched in this run.
Possible founder application
Use it as a product, platform or behavior mechanism reference rather than a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract/metadata retrieved; consult the linked paper for full methods and tables.
The publisher research summary reports the two competing game-wiki setting and the finding that stronger competitive position is associated with higher activity, while the methods section describes 443 updates and the before/after event-study (RDiT) design. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.