"Giving" in online recommendation systems: The roles played by narcissism and altruism

This study explores Altruism and Narcissism as motivation for online informational giving. There is a dilemma about whether helping generally is motivated by altruism or egoism. Evidence is also gathering which demonstrates a propensity for narcissists to move online, to places where they can gain more exposure and access a large number of shallow relationships. For this study, 44 participants from tripadvisor.com took the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) which measures sub-clinical narcissism, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) which measures altruism and an open-ended question about motivation. No statistically significant results were found. However, the open question revealed Reciprocation as the most common reason for reviewing, thus highlighting the possibility of Reciprocation as an important factor in online informational giving.