Online communities rely heavily on badges to incentivize users to participate in voluntary activities. We examine the relationship between earned badges/pursued badges and contributions in the Stack Overflow question and answer community. Our main results reveal that different levels of earned and pursued badges increase the amount of subsequent answering activity. In addition, earned gold badges are the most influential in the motivation of users while earned bronze badges are the least impactful. Furthermore, the effect of badges involves positive spillovers from higher levels of earned badges to lower ones. Our findings offer important theoretical and managerial implications for online communities.

在线社区严重依赖徽章来激励用户参与志愿活动。我们在 Stack Overflow 问答社区中检查获得的徽章/追求的徽章与贡献之间的关系。我们的主要结果表明，不同级别的获得和追求的徽章会增加后续回答活动的数量。此外，金奖徽章对用户动机的影响最大，而铜奖徽章影响最小。此外，徽章的效果涉及从较高级别获得的徽章到较低级别的积极溢出。我们的发现为在线社区提供了重要的理论和管理意义。