I do not know of directly measured social or economical impact, but there are at least some indicators of the dependency on Wikipedia as a free information source for modern societies and professions, maybe that helps:

        • A. Head and M. Eisenberg. How college students use the web to conduct everyday life research. First Monday, 16(4), 2011. ISSN 13960466. URL http://firstmonday.org/ojs/ index.php/fm/article/view/3484. For decision making: “...turning to search engines and Wikipedia almost as much as they did to friends and family”
        • K.-S. Kim, E. Yoo-Lee, and S.-C. Joanna Sin. Social media as information source: Undergraduates’ use and evaluation behavior. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 48(1):1–3, 2011.
        • J. Beck. Doctors’ #1 source for healthcare information: Wikipedia. The Atlantic, 2014. URL http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/doctors%2D1%2Dsource%2Dfor% 2Dhealthcare%2Dinformation%2Dwikipedia/284206/.

General population:

"As of May 2010, 53% of American internet users look for information on Wikipedia, up from 36% of internet users the first time we asked about Wikipedia usage in February 2007". (http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/01/13/wikipedia-past-and-present/ ; sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a newer version of that poll available)

42% used Wikipedia at least once a week in 2016 in Germany: http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/index.php?id=559 (n=1508 German speakers, representative for the German population) and it has been increasing quite steadily from 2007 (20%) until 2013 (32%) http://www.ard-zdf-onlinestudie.de/fileadmin/Onlinestudie/PDF/Eimeren_Frees.pdf , page 7 (“zumindest einmal wöchentlich”), for “at least sometimes” it’s up to around 70%

Best,

Fabian

> On 24.01.2017, at 23:19, Aaron Halfaker <ahalfaker@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia has probably had some substantial external impacts.  Are there any studies quantifying them?  Maybe increased scientific literacy?  Or maybe GDP rises with access to Wikipedia?
>
> Are there any studies that have explored how Wikipedia has affected economic or social issues?
>
> I'm looking for any references you've got.
>
> -Aaron

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Gruß,
Fabian

—
Dr. Fabian Flöck
Researcher
Computational Social Science department
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Unter Sachsenhausen 6-8, 50667 Cologne, Germany
Tel: + 49 (0) 221-47694-208
fabian.floeck@gesis.org

www.gesis.org
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