This is a really great question, and well beyond my areas of expertise. What I can point you to is this excellent book by my colleague Bob Kraut and several of

This is a really great question, and well beyond my areas of expertise. What I can point you to is this excellent book by my colleague Bob Kraut and several of his colleagues, entitled Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. It summarizes a lot of empirical research into design claims, about how to socialize newcomers, increasing contributions, quality of contributions, and more. https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2912/Building-Successful-Online-CommunitiesEvidence https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/2912/Building-Success... You might also look into research on pro-social behaviors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosocial_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosocial_behavior One of my favorite books that I learned about from my colleagues is Influence by Robert Cialdini. It looks at how to use known social influence tactics to change people's behaviors. Ideally, these would be used for things that society widely regards as positive (e.g. less littering), though these have also been used for phishing attacks and other dark patterns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini