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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
In economics, a critical mass is considered as a main factor for the emergence of collective action. Investigating activity of source code commits in successful open source software projects -which are a rare example of reproducible cases of cooperation- we show that, indeed, critical mass is an important driver for collective action. However, on the long run, collective action triggers joining of new participants and thus feeds the critical mass, thus ensuring the sustainability of the project. The observed stylized facts have the same patterns as social epidemics and can be rationalized by a mean-field approximation of a self-excited Hawkes conditional Poisson branching process. These results have far-reaching consequences for understanding cooperation in real social systems, and particularly they open new perspectives for identification and characterization of various social roles (leader, follower, reciprocity), but also for prediction of successful collective ventures.
Host: Alexander Gutfraind