Online communities support extensive interactions among their members. Membership in most of these communities is voluntary, content supplied by other members is typically a primary attractant to new members, and barriers to admission and exit are minimal (Lampe, 2009; Lampe, 2010). For a community to thrive, it is necessary that members remain active in the community and continue to interact with others. Given that sustaining a solid base of active long-term members is critical to the sustainability of an online community, it is important that factors that contribute to the length of active membership are identified. Addressing certain limitations of prior studies, this dissertation examines key factors such as rate of participation, rate of feedback received, early participation and early feedback received that may influence the length of time members stay active in a community. A mixed method approach that included server log analyses for two online communities, Everything2 and Sploder, and qualitative interviews with members of Everything2, was used to study how these factors are related to how long members remain active in a community. A Cox proportional hazard rate model and a Granger causality test were employed to analyze the server log data. The results suggest that certain types of early participation (first post submitted in Sploder and first post and first message submitted in Everything2) and certain type of early feedback received (deletion of post in Sploder and first positive and negative vote and deletion of first post in Everything2) are significant predictors of how long a member remains active in Sploder and Everything2. A member's average rate of participation (writeups, votes given, and messages sent) in Everything2 is positively correlated with length of active membership, but not in Sploder. The rate of feedback received is not significantly correlated in either community. It is well-known that correlational evidence is not dispositive proof of a causal link. Therefore, the relationships between the dependent variable and the independent variables identified by the Cox Proportional Hazard Rate model are further examined using a Granger causality test, with which time series data can be employed for a more rigorous test of causality. The results showed no causality between rate of participation and the length of time a member remains active in a community. Findings from the quantitative studies are expanded on, based on interviews with long-term members in the community. These results show that the factors contributing to length of active membership may vary among online communities. While some results may generalize to other communities if the communities are similar enough, not all results do generalize. The findings also suggest that early negative feedback has a strong negative impact on how long a member will remain active in an online community, as both Everything2 and Sploder had a significant negative correlation with deletion of first post. The implications of these results for the design online communities are discussed.
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