Investigating the effects of Goodreads challenges on individuals reading habits

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how Goodreads reading challenges influence user reading habits, participation trends, and gender differences, revealing their impact on reading productivity and success rates.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of Goodreads challenges, highlighting gender effects and the relationship between challenge participation and reading volume.

Findings

Gender significantly affects challenge success.

Participation correlates with increased reading volume.

Participation trends have evolved over the years.

Abstract

Sharing our goals with others and setting public challenges for ourselves is a topic that has been the center of many discussions. This study examines reading challenges, how participation in them has changed throughout the years, and how they influence users reading productivity. To do so, we analyze Goodreads, a social book cataloging website, with a yearly challenge feature. We further show that gender is a significant factor in how successful individuals are in their challenges. Additionally, we investigate the association between participation in reading challenges and the number of books people read.