Investigating the effects of Goodreads challenges on individuals reading habits

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.