In our day and age, people work pretty much like this:
They hear something is hot stuff, so they join to be a part of it
They see cool shit, so they praise it for being cool
They feel when something makes them happy, they are rewarded and reward it back to get more of that dopamine (circlejerks, echo chambers, or something along those lines).
They think in simple terms, since most people are not geniuses or want to be fully informed of something before taking initiative.
In all the above cases, what they need is an incentive to motivate them.
I used to pay all the SBD I was making to bots, so I could increase my voting power. I wasn't interested in cashing in on them. I stopped once SBD dropped from 12 to 3 and now farm like a slug. I didn't lose any money or win any money... yet. But I am still here, since even a few cents every day are more than nothing for the stuff I write every day.