Factors Influencing Researcher Cooperation in Virtual Academic Communities Based on Principal Component Analysis

Abstract

As a professional virtual community, the virtual academic community meets the new needs of scholars for academic cooperation in the network environment. It provides a more convenient way for scientific research cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to combine the factors influencing researcher cooperation in virtual academic communities and to verify and improve the index system of the factors influencing researcher cooperation in virtual academic communities with data support. Data for the research was obtained in an online questionnaire survey wjx.cn from forum muchong.com, which is the largest virtual academic community in China. Using principal component analysis method provides an in-depth data analysis of individual factors. The SPSS 20 was used to conduct a preliminary descriptive statistical analysis of the questionnaires. The results obtained show that community trust plays the most important role in the collaboration of researchers in virtual academic communities and that group interaction factors and individual factors also affect the cooperation of researchers in virtual academic communities. The conclusion suggests that the virtual academic communities need to establish and improve management norms and trust mechanisms, and also need to refine and improve the forum section and community incentives.

User-driven business model innovation: an ethnographic inquiry into Toutiao in the Chinese context

“…A growing number of users are relying on the Internet to obtain useful information instead of offline sources (Fieseler, Bucher, and Hoffmann 2019). They connect with one another through online channels or virtual communities to share their interests (Pang and Capek 2020), for peer-to-peer information sharing, problem-solving (Chang et al 2020), intentional information seeking, social interactions (Chuah et al 2020), and chatting (Dholakia, Bagozzi and Pearo 2004). The success of virtual communities, however, greatly depends on the contributions of their members (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2002).…”