The Effects of Diversity in Global, Distributed Collectives: A Study of User Participation in Open Source Projects

Diversity is a defining characteristic of global collectives on the Internet. Although there is substantial evidence to suggest that diversity can have profound implications for a variety of outcomes including performance, member engagement, and withdrawal behavior, prior research has examined the effects of diversity predominantly in the context of organizational workgroups or virtual teams. In this paper we use a diversity lens to investigate the success of non-traditional virtual work groups exemplified by open source software (OSS) projects. We build on the diversity literature to propose that three types of diversity: separation, variety and disparity diversity, influence user participation in OSS projects both directly, and through an effect on contributions to the software project. To the degree that OSS projects are critically dependent on human capital, user participation is a key outcome. We instantiate the operational definitions of the three forms of diversity to the specific and unique context of open source projects. Using archival data from 337 projects hosted on SourceForge.net, we find that variety diversity, as measured by diversity in both project roles and participant tenure, positively affects user participation. These effects are partially mediated by project contributions. The impact of separation diversity, operationalized as diversity in the languages spoken by participants, is not significant. Disparity diversity, reflecting variations in participant activity, has a negative influence on user participation. We discuss how understanding the nuanced effects of different kinds of diversity in OSS development contexts both advances the literature on diversity and OSS and provides practical implications for OSS participants.