Do the same motivations drive all contributors to public document repositories? An empirical study Naren B. Peddibhotla npeddibhotla@csom.umn.edu Mani R. Subramani msubramani@csom.umn.edu 3-365, Information and Decision Sciences Department Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota 321, 19 th Ave South Minneapolis, MN 55455 November 16, 2005 Abstract: Public document repositories comprise a major form of online forums on the Internet where people submit documents having content that is potentially useful to others, yet which is not specifically asked for by anyone. Among the various types of other forums such as listservs, bulletin boards, etc., there has been little research on repositories. Prior work has also mostly considered people contributing to such forums as a homogeneous group by treating them as being driven by the same motivations on average. In this study, we present a theoretical model of motivations that drive contributions to public document repositories, including how those motivations vary across two sub-groups of contributors. We test this model in a survey of 185 contributors to a large online repository of product reviews on the Internet. Results of the regression analysis show that the knowledge and utilitarian motives predict contribution to the repository as expected. Contrary to expectations, the ego-enhancement motive and evaluation apprehension are respectively negatively and positively associated with contribution. Our most interesting finding is that the knowledge motive is more strongly associated with contribution for non-regular contributors as compared to those individuals who contribute on a regular basis.