Unemployment and Digital Public Goods Contribution

Economic crises have a harmful effect on employment. However, whereas the resulting loss of jobs has been shown to have many negative consequences for the affected individuals, it may also push them into new activities, such as provision of service to their communities. In this paper, we show how individuals engage in socially useful activities after an increase in unemployment. Specifically, we document increased online content generation at Wikipedia, the world’s largest user-generated knowledge repository. Leveraging German district-level and European country-level unemployment data, we analyze the relationship between the economic crisis in 2008–2010 and contributions to Wikipedia. We find increased socially valuable activity in the form of knowledge acquisition and contributions to Wikipedia. For German districts, we observe an increase in the rate of content generation on Wikipedia in more severely affected districts. These effects are even stronger at the European country level. Our findings suggest that public goods provision increases as a positive side effect of economic crises. We stress that similar patterns could apply to other digital content platforms. Under the backdrop that the potential value of the outcome of online volunteering and its societal impact is expected to grow drastically in the next years, we show that platforms could benefit from negative economic conditions in attracting volunteers. Moreover, in the coming years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence will call for a rise of online volunteering platforms. Therefore, the potential value of the outcome of online volunteering and its societal impact is expected to grow drastically in the next years.