Estimating Career Benefits from Online Community Leadership: Evidence from Stack Exchange Moderators
中文摘要
许多 IT 从业者试图通过担任在线社区的领导者（例如担任版主或管理员）来改善自身的职业前景。我们考察此类社区领导力是否会带来个人职业的（因果性）改善。我们构建了一个数据集，其中包含 2010 年至 2020 年间在 Stack Exchange 问答社区中寻求当选版主（mods）的 IT 从业者的工作履历。我们在两种互补的识别策略下估计担任版主的职业收益：双重差分（DID）与断点回归（RD）。我们在每种设计下均观察到定性一致的结果，发现当选版主角色对工作流动具有显著、因果且正向的影响。我们估计，在当选后的两年内，担任版主使换工作的概率提高 4.7 至 12.3 个百分点。我们还报告了一系列次级分析，涉及相关的薪酬增长，并给出了与“社会资本与信号传递发挥作用”这一观点相一致的证据。我们的发现有助于理解在线社区领导力的收益，并拓展了对参与在线社区动机的理解。
Abstract
Many IT professionals seek to improve their job prospects by engaging as leaders of online communities, for example, by serving as a moderator or admin. We investigate whether such community leadership leads to (causal) improvements in individuals’ careers. We assemble a data set, including job histories of IT professionals who have sought election as moderators (mods) in Stack Exchange question-and-answer communities, between 2010 and 2020. We estimate the career benefits of moderatorship under two complementary identification strategies: difference-in-differences (DID) and regression discontinuity (RD). We observe qualitatively consistent results under each design, finding that election to a moderator role has a significant, causal, positive effect on job mobility. We estimate that moderatorship increases the probability of a job change by between 4.7 and 12.3 percentage points over the two years following the election. We also report a series of secondary analyses that speak to associated salary increases and show evidence consistent with the notion that social capital and signaling play a role. Our findings help us understand the benefits of online community leadership, and they extend our understanding of the motivations for online community engagement.