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Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Applying an eMASS Customization Program as a Research Tool to Evaluate Consumer Benefits
Published on: September 27, 2019
Impact of the quality and diversity of reference products on creative activities in online communities
Keisuke Sato1, Kunhao Yang2, Kazuhiro Ueda3
1Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 153-8902, Japan. lesucre326@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
Abstract:
In creativity research, an important unresolved issue relates to identifying the kind of information an individual should be exposed to in order to be highly creative. We aimed to gain insights into this issue; we collected and statistically analyzed three datasets related to three large online communities (namely Cities: Skylines, SCP-wiki, and Archive of Our Own) engaged in mod development and novel writing to examine whether the quality and diversity of other people's products referred to have a positive effect on product generation. Our analysis revealed the following three findings: (1) the quality diversity of reference products generated by others has the most positive impact on the quality of generated products when it is neither high nor low, (2) the content diversity of reference products generated by others has a negative impact on the quality of generated products, and (3) the quality of reference products generated by others has a negative impact on the quality of generated products when it is extremely high. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for creativity research.
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