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An exploratory study of social loafing in asynchronous virtual collaboration

This paper reports an exploratory study that investigates social loafing in asynchronous virtual collaboration. Specifically, we conducted an experiment to examine the following three research questions: 1) Does social loafing exist in virtual collaboration conducted in asynchronous mode?; 2) Does providing feedback about their co-workers' performance increase an individual's contribution to a group task?; 3) Does their co-workers' performance level influence an individual's contribution to a group task? Although no significant differences were found related to individual's contribution and perceived social loafing between the control and treatment groups, this study revealed a very intriguing phenomenon: individuals who were informed that their co-workers contributed a little to the group task did not perceive that their co-workers were engaged in social loafing. Future research is needed to investigate whether individuals involved in asynchronous virtual collaboration perceive their co-workers' social loafing differently from those involved in traditional face-to-face or synchronous virtual collaboration.