Inducing user cooperation in peer-to-peer television : deriving mechanisms from psychological theories

Television and the Internet have proven to be a popular combination for both broadcasters and viewers. Because of this popularity they are increasingly facing the consequences of central bottlenecks, which could be overcome by taking a different approach: Peer-to Peer (P2P) technology. However, P2P systems can only be successful with as much cooperation among as many users as possible. This chapter explains how this cooperation is hard to enforce, and how inducing it might be more successful. Relevant psychological theories are listed that can be used to induce this user cooperation, along with possible applications of cooperation inducing mechanisms for Peer-to-Peer Television (P2P-TV) systems. The authors aim to provide practical criteria along which these mechanisms can be evaluated on their contribution to social activity in P2P-TV systems