European Wikipedia platforms, sharing economy and national differences in participation: a case study

Abstract

The following exploratory study considers which macro-level factors can lead to thesharing economy being more popular in certain countries and less so in others. Anexample of commons-based peer production in the form of the level of contributingto Wikipedia in 24 European countries is used as a proxy for participation in thesharing economy. Demographic variables (number of native speakers, a proxy forpopulation) and development ones (Human Development Index-level and internetpenetration) are found to be less significant than cultural values (particularly self-expression and secular-rational axes of the Inglehart-Welzel model). Three clustersof countries are identified, with the Scandinavian/Baltic/Protestant countries beingroughlyfive times as productive as the Eastern Europe/Balkans/Orthodox ones