Forming relationship commitments to online communities: The role of social motivations

Although administrators of online communities (OCs) may focus on improving their OCs through upgrading technology and enhancing the usability of their OCs to attract additional users, the level of OC participation may be associated with social motives. The purpose of this study is to understand how social motivations (that is, network externalities and social norms) affect members committed to OCs. This study tests the hypotheses on data collected from 396 undergraduate students. Data analyses show that network externalities and social norms directly influence social interaction ties, which subsequently results in commitment toward a community. Social norms also directly influence relationship commitments to a community. The results provide insights into how social motivations lead to commitment to an OC, reminding OC administrators to encourage member commitment to the OC from the perspective of social motivations.     

The influence of familiarity,trust and norms of reciprocity on an experienced sense of community: an empirical analysis based on social online services

The growing use of social online services raises the question of what encourages members to participate actively and maintain accumulated social capital. Our research has particularly become aware of the relevance of familiarity, trust and reciprocity in understanding the members' sense of a virtual community (VC). Familiarity and trust are efficient criteria to assess and determine the extent to which one should engage in a virtual relationship. Furthermore, the effort of sharing experiences and knowledge must be based on the expectation of receiving certain returns. A structural equation modelling, specifically partial least squares, is proposed to assess the relationships between the constructs. Overall, the empirical results provided strong support for the hypotheses. Familiarity and trust lead the member to develop a growing perceived community support (PCS) and significantly influence the sense of a VC. Norms of reciprocity directly influence affective trust and PCS. Higher familiarity does not moderate the impact of affective trust on PCS, however. The results of this study could thus help social online service providers to create a successful business model and to determine the main drivers of the members' sense of a VC.     

Agent-Based Modeling to Inform Online Community Design: Impact of Topical Breadth,Message Volume,and Discussion Moderation on Member Commitment and Contribution

The design of complex social systems, such as online communities, requires the consideration of many parameters, a practice at odds with social science research that focuses on the effects of a small set of variables. In this article, we show how synthesizing insights from multiple, narrowly focused social science theories in an agent-based model helps us understand factors that lead to the success of online communities. The agent-based model combines insights from theories related to collective effort, information overload, social identity, and interpersonal attraction to predict motivations for online community participation. We conducted virtual experiments to develop hypotheses around three design decisions about how to orchestrate an online community—topical breadth, message volume, and discussion moderation—and the trade-offs involved in making these decisions. The simulation experiments suggest that broad topics and high message volume can lead to higher member commitment. Personalized moderation outperforms other types of moderation in increasing members' commitment and contribution, especially in topically broad communities and those with high message volume. In comparison, community-level moderation increases commitment but not contribution, and only in topically narrow communities. These simulation results suggest a critical trade-off between informational and relational benefits. This research illustrates that there are many interactions among the design decisions that are important to consider; the particulars of the community's goals often determine the effectiveness of some decisions. It also demonstrates the value of agent-based modeling in synthesizing simple social science theories to describe and prescribe behaviors in a complex system, generating novel insights that inform the design of online communities.     

Learning Virtual Community Loyalty Behavior From a Perspective of Social Cognitive Theory

Drawing upon social cognitive theory (SCT), this research postulates several personal and environmental factors as key drivers of virtual community loyalty behavior in online settings. An empirical testing of this model, by investigating undergraduate students' participation in communities of online games, reveals the applicability of SCT in virtual communities. The study's test results show that the influences of both affective commitment and social norms on community loyalty behavior are significant, whereas the influences of both exchange ideology and social support on community loyalty behavior are insignificant. This research contributes to the online community literature by assessing critical antecedent factors to the unexplored area of community loyalty behavior, by validating idiosyncratic drivers of community loyalty behavior and by performing an operationalization of affective commitment and social norms in a virtual world. Last, managerial implications and limitations of this research are provided.     

Predicting continuance in online communities: model development and empirical test

Popular interest in online communities has grown rapidly in recent years as a result of the widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 applications. However, the full values and potential of online communities cannot be realised without users' ongoing participation. Thus, this study aims at developing and empirically testing a research model to examine users' continuance intention to participate in an online community based on an extended information systems (IS) continuance model. Specifically, entertainment value and affective commitment are included in the IS continuance model and empirically examined in the context of online communities. A total of 240 returns collected from an online survey, which was conducted among users of a website bulletin board-based community in China, were analysed using partial least squares. The results reveal that users' continuance intention to participate in an online community is determined by both satisfaction and affective commitment. Satisfaction and affective commitment are, in turn, influenced by positive disconfirmations of purposive and entertainment values. The findings of this study contribute not only to theory building in online community continuance but also inform online community moderators in their effort to develop strategies for retaining their users.     

A study of social participation and knowledge sharing in the teachers' online professional community of practice

To facilitate professional development of teachers in the online context, the online community of practice (CoPs) has become an important platform in which individuals with similar interests or common goals get together to share their resources, develop working strategies, solve problems, and improve individual as well as organizational performance. In this study, we have collected self-reported knowledge-sharing behaviors from 321 members of the largest online professional CoP of teachers in Taiwan. The results show that closer connections among online CoP members can lead to greater recognition of and altruism towards others. Moreover, performance expectation and self-efficacy belief play essential roles in knowledge-sharing participation. Thus, the development of social relationships among online teacher members helps them obtain potential resources and reliable support through their social network. Also, teachers' membership in the online professional CoP fosters a prosocial attitude that heightens their willingness to share useful resources and solve other members' problems, both emotionally and instrumentally. Consequently, knowledge-sharing behaviors, in terms of knowledge giving and knowing receiving, are significantly predicted by prosocial commitment and performance expectation respectively. The implications to both research and practice are provided in this paper.     

Understanding Key Antecedents of User Loyalty toward Mobile Messenger Applications: An Integrative View of Emotions and the Dedication-Constraint Model

Given the growth of and competition among mobile messenger applications (MMAs), attracting users’ attention and enhancing their loyalty have become large challenges for MMA service providers. This study provides a theoretical view for understanding the mechanisms that lead to user loyalty toward MMAs. Although emotions and the dedication-constraint model are the two main research disciplines via which the formation of user loyalty has been investigated, few studies have unified these two disciplines. A theoretical model is developed by synthesizing emotional responses and the dedication-constraint model. Based on the ambivalent view of emotions, we examine the exact effects of positive and negative emotions on user loyalty to MMA. Moreover, we identify an encompassing set of antecedents to affective and calculative commitments in the MMA context. A structural equation modeling (SEM) method is used to test the research model based on a sample of 300 KakaoTalk users in South Korea. Our findings reveal that user loyalty to MMAs is jointly shaped by dedication- and constraint-based mechanisms and emotional responses. The findings indicate that affective commitment significantly influences user loyalty, both directly and indirectly, through positive emotions. However, calculative commitment has significant positive effects on positive emotions and user loyalty, but it is also positively related to negative emotions. Perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and trust significantly influence affective commitment to MMAs, while social norms significantly affect calculative commitment to MMAs. Theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.     

Toward a theory of perceived benefits,affective commitment,and continuance intention in social virtual worlds: cultural values (indulgence and individualism) matter

In this study we examine the contingent effects of two cultural values, indulgence and individualism, on the relationships between perceived benefits (utilitarian value, hedonic value, and relational capital), affective commitment, and continuance intention in social virtual worlds. We test our theoretical model in multi-group analyses using SmartPLS 2.0, based on a sample of 414 Second Life users from the U.S.A., Great Britain, and numerous other countries. By comparing the high- vs the low-indulgence subsamples, we find that indulgence weakens the effect of utilitarian value, but strengthens the effect of hedonic value, on affective commitment. Furthermore, compared with low-individualism users, the users with high-individualism showed a weaker effect of relational capital on affective commitment, as well as a weaker effect of affective commitment on continuance intention. The theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.     

The impact of the social context on value and expectancy beliefs in an online graduate program: The role of social presence

This study examines the influence of perceived social presence on online graduate students' value and expectancy beliefs. Forty-nine participants enrolled in an online teacher leadership graduate program completed questionnaires that measured perceived social presence and value and expectancy beliefs. A series of simple linear regression analyses revealed that social presence positively predicted students' value for online learning. Social presence did not predict participants' expectations of future success in teacher leadership. Results partially supported the assumption of the expectancy-value model that motivational beliefs are influenced by the information students receive from social partners. Moreover, the study tested and confirmed the application of the model in online settings and for students pursuing graduate education.     

Investigation of online community voluntary behavior using cognitive map

It is difficult even for experts in organizational behavior to cognitively predict the causal effect of one factor on the others. A cognitive map is used to describe the inference process for the investigation of online community voluntary behavior. The investigation of online community voluntary behavior demands consideration of the complex causal effect from support for member communication, perceived community value, recognition for contribution, freedom of expression, and interactive communication, to community commitment, loyalty, and social participation. A standardized causal coefficient estimated in structural equation models (SEMs) is used to create a cognitive map illustrating the effect of the status of one component on the status of another component. The cognitive map provides preliminary insights into the direction of online community voluntary behavior toward maximizing community commitment, loyalty, and social participation.     

Identifying manufacturing operational conditions by physics-based feature extraction and ensemble clustering

Manufacturing processes usually exhibit mixed operational conditions (OCs) due to changes in process/tool/equipment health status. Undesired OCs are direct causes of out-of-control production and thus need to be identified. Data-driven OC identification has been widely used for recognizing undesired OCs, yet most methods of this kind require labels indicating the OCs in model training. In industrial applications, such labels are rarely available due to delay, incompleteness or physical constraints in data collection. A typical case is the thermal images acquired by in-process infrared camera and pyrometer, which contain rich information about process health status but are unlabeled. To facilitate data-driven OC identification with unlabeled thermal images, this study proposes a feature extraction-clustering framework that characterizes the heat-affected zone by its temperature profile and performs ensemble clustering on the extracted features to label the data. Domain knowledge from plant manufacturing is incorporated in the framework to map cluster labels to OCs. Both offline OC recovery and online OC identification are studied. Thermal images from hot stamping in automotive manufacturing are used to demonstrate and validate the proposed method. The feasibility, effectiveness and generality are well justified by the case study results.     

Investigating the role of identity and gender in technology mediated learning

Instructors and trainers are increasingly using online education and technology-mediated learning (TML) to supplement or replace traditional approaches to classroom teaching. Because mandatory involvement requirements may not intrinsically motivate learners to achieve high quality learning, social factors with commitment, such as identification among group members, are especially important determinants of TML success. This article investigates an individual's social and self identities as important determinants in developing affective commitment (identification) and intrinsic motivation (perceived enjoyment) to share knowledge by email in the TML environment. Furthermore, given the recent emphasis on gender in system adoption and socio-linguistic literature, this study investigates gender as a moderating variable in the proposed model. An empirical test of the proposed model was conducted in the pilot test (n = 155) as well as the main test (n = 411). Social and self identities influence identification (R ² = 0.42) and perceived enjoyment (R ² = 0.52) of sharing knowledge by email. As expected, there are significant moderating effects of gender in these relationships in that male shows stronger effects of self identity while female shows stronger effects of social identity. The results of this study will help us understand the antecedents of effective knowledge sharing intervention in the TML environment, based on the integrated model of social identity theory, social influence theory, self determination theory and socio-linguistic literature.     

Constraint-based and dedication-based mechanisms for encouraging online self-disclosure: Is personalization the only thing that matters?

Consumer-generated self-disclosure is better than firm-generated advertising and sales reports in increasing contact opportunities and also more credible for firms to foster alignment with future market expectations. Previous research mostly assesses online self-disclosure from the rational approach of anticipated benefits and privacy risks without considering the “privacy paradox” phenomenon (users behave contrarily to privacy concern) in social networking sites (SNSs). We develop a theoretical model, grounded in constraint-based (lock-in) and dedication-based (trust-building) mechanisms and social identity theory, to predict online self-disclosure. We test the proposed theoretical model by surveying 395 consumers with participation experience in an online SNS. Different from the rational approach behind personalization, we advance knowledge on how to apply social identity, as well as constraint-based and dedication-based mechanisms, to motivate online self-disclosure induced by consumers. We provide theoretical and practical insights based on our research findings for managing the motivational mechanisms of online self-disclosure.     

Can consumers be persuaded on brand microblogs? An empirical study

Building upon the persuasion theory in the social psychology literature, this study investigates how companies can use microblogging services to influence consumers’ participation and brand loyalty. We develop and empirically test our research model using an online survey in China. Our findings show that persuasion factors, including information quality, perceived similarity, and source credibility, increase community commitment. Perceived similarity and source credibility exhibit bias effects on information quality. Community commitment affects participation and brand loyalty, which is also influenced by participation. We expect that this research can contribute to the existing literature and provide marketers with important practical suggestions.     

Higher education scholars' participation and practices on Twitter

Scholars participate in online social networks for professional purposes. In such networks, learning takes the form of participation and identity formation through engagement in and contribution to networked practices. While current literature describes the possible benefits of online participation, empirical research on scholars' use of online social networks in the educational technology literature is negligible. The purpose of this paper is to understand scholars' naturalistic practices in social networks in general, and on Twitter in particular. Tweets from 45 scholars were analysed qualitatively to arrive at dominant themes describing online social network practice. Findings indicate that scholars participating on Twitter (1) shared information, resources, and media relating to their professional practice; (2) shared information about their classroom and their students; (3) requested assistance from and offered suggestions to others; (4) engaged in social commentary; (5) engaged in digital identity and impression management; (6) sought to network and make connections with others; and (7) highlighted their participation in online networks other than Twitter. These findings assist the field in understanding the emerging practice of scholarly participation in online networks.     

A dedication-constraint model of consumer switching behavior in mobile payment applications

Consumer switching behavior damages the market share and profitability of mobile payment application (MPA) providers. However, this issue has received scarce attention in the information systems discipline. Our study proposes a contextualized dedication-constraint model of consumer switching behavior of MPAs. By conducting an online survey of 973 MPA consumers, we find that platform leadership, service leadership, technology leadership, and affective commitment are key dedication-based factors, which reduce switching behavior. Meanwhile, personalization costs, learning costs, uncertainty costs, and calculative commitment are important constraint-based factors, which decrease switching behavior. Our empirical findings have significant implications for research and practice on switching behavior.     

Understanding affective commitment in social virtual worlds: The role of cultural tightness

Understanding how cultural differences affect the formation of users’ affective commitment (ACO) to social virtual world (SVW) services is a critical but understudied issue. Using a novel, norm-based cultural approach, we introduce cultural tightness (CT) to capture cultural differences in users’ collective environment and postulate a model that investigates the contingent effects of CT on the relationships between ACO and its drivers. A two-level analysis of survey data gathered from 400 field users of an influential SVW service and secondary data of CT reveals that the effects of satisfaction, calculative commitment, and subjective norm on ACO are contingent on CT.     

Exploring the relationship between perceptions of social capital and enacted support online

Online social networking sites enable users to connect with large, heterogeneous groups of people. While extant research suggests individuals benefit psychologically from the perception that they are well connected, little is known about the nature of tangible resources embedded in these online networks. In this study 49 participants sent 588 requests for instrumental help to their Facebook friends to determine the accessibility of networked resources and online social capital. Almost 80% of these modest requests went unanswered, and perceived bridging and bonding capital did not explain enacted support. However, people who occupied socially prestigious positions were the most likely to benefit from their friend's help. These results suggest that expansive mediated networks may yield limited instrumental benefits.     

Explaining members' proactive participation in virtual communities

Understanding members' proactive participation in virtual communities is important to both academics and practitioners. This study extends virtual community research by proposing and testing a model that outlines the antecedents of members' proactive participation behavior and incorporates mediating mechanisms and moderating effects. The findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative data, reveal that social, hedonic, and utilitarian community attributes significantly influence proactive participation through community identification and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, the conversion of community identification into proactive participation behavior depends on the public recognition of contributions. The authors conclude with some managerial and research implications.     

Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities: A Study of Citizenship Behavior and Its Social-Relational Antecedents

A virtual community is a type of online structure that enables Internet users to communicate and collaborate. Users' knowledge contributions are critical to the viability and sustainability of virtual communities. This article studies virtual community members' knowledge sharing from the perspective of citizenship behavior defined as members' spontaneous contribution to the community without expectation of return or reciprocation. The social-relational antecedents of citizenship behavior are explored through an examination of how members' general attitude and desire for relationship building and maintaining, including attachment motivation, social support orientation, and disposition to trust influence their trusting beliefs and citizenship knowledge-sharing behavior. Hypotheses are developed and tested with survey data from Chinese and American users of virtual communities. In general, the results of data analyses support our research model. This article contributes empirically to virtual community research and has practical implications for virtual community development.