Why do replies appear? A multi-level event history analysis of online policy discussions

Participation takes time in both synchronous and asynchronous communication. To encourage participation, most scholars suggested strategies to change participants’ motivation to adjust the way how they distribute their time resources. We, instead, view time as an evolving environment with specific temporal norms. This study employed a multi-level event history model to explore what factors affect response behaviors in an online policy discussion forum. By proposing four time-constant individual post factors and four time-varying environment factors, and analyzing 1798 posts in the forum, the study found that both individual post and environment factors are significant predictors of online interactions in different time phases. Some interaction effects between individual post and environment factors were also found. Rather than merely focusing on participants’ resource to take part in online discussions, we suggest that future studies should examine how contextual constraints that change over time can influence response behaviors.