Brandtzæg, Petter Bae, and Jan Heim. "User loyalty and online communities: why members of online communities are not faithful." 2nd international conference on INtelligent TEchnologies for interactive enterTAINment. 2010.

This study explores the reasons behind the declining loyalty of members in online communities, analyzing 200 responses from an extensive survey of online community users and a representative sample of Internet users. The findings identify nine primary reasons for decreased participation: lack of interesting people/friends, low quality content, low usability, harassment and bullying, being time-consuming/isolating, low trust, over-commercialization, dissatisfaction with moderators, and a general sense of boredom. The paper discusses these results in the context of design implications for online communities and suggests directions for future research.