Beyond Open Source: Analyzing Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Types in Closed-Source Software Community Participation

In recent years, user participation has become central to product innovation as companies are increasingly relying on online communities for feedback and idea generation. In open-source software contexts, this collaboration is often driven by intrinsically motivated users who contribute out of enjoyment, problem-solving interest, and a desire to support shared goals. However, the role of motivational framing in encouraging user participation during product ideation tasks remains understudied in closed-source software communities. Therefore, this study aimed to examine how intrinsic and extrinsic motivational framings, along with professional experience, influence the quantity and quality of user-generated ideas during new product development. To do so, a between-subjects experimental design was implemented via an online survey targeting contributors in the Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) community on two platforms - Slack and Reddit. Participants (n = 109) were randomly assigned to one of three motivational framing conditions: intrinsic, extrinsic, or neutral (control), and were asked to generate feature suggestions for the SFCC platform (n = 237). Idea quantity and quality were measured, with quality assessed across four dimensions: novelty, usefulness, clarity, and feasibility with the help of an AI model and a SFCC-proficient software engineer. The experimental survey also measured post-task intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and creative self-efficacy. Then, to test the direct and moderated effects of motivational framing and professional experience on participation outcomes, regression analyses were carried out. The results revealed that the hypotheses regarding the effect of motivational framing on overall idea quality and quantity were not supported. However, exploratory analyses suggested that creative self-efficacy was a strong predictor of ideation outcomes, possibly outweighing the impact of motivational framing. Furthermore, a disaggregated analysis of idea quality dimensions showed that intrinsic framing negatively affected clarity among experienced users, while extrinsic framing positively interacted with experience to predict higher feasibility scores. These dimension-specific effects suggest that the influence of motivation may be contingent on both user traits and the idea quality composites. The findings of the present study indicate that in the context of closed-source software communities, brief motivational framings alone may not be sufficient to drive participation. Instead, individual traits, particularly creative self-efficacy and domain experience, may play a more central role.