Investigating Moderators of the Influence of Enablers on Participation in Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Communities

Abstract

Virtual communities (VCs) are emerging as a cyberspace where active knowledge exchange between people occurs without time or space constraints. For VCs to be sustainable, a major challenge is ensuring that members voluntarily contribute and share knowledge. Therefore, many VCs provide anonymity as a means of encouraging members to participate more in knowledge-sharing activities. Given the recent prevalence of anonymity-based VCs, this study aimed to examine what has a significant impact on human behavior, such as knowledge sharing in VCs. This study focused on governance-related factors of VCs and intrinsic motivation factors of users as participation-enabling factors in VCs. Particularly, this study analyzed the differences based on two types of self-awareness (public and private) and the level of anonymity. A web-based survey was conducted to collect data and the research model was tested using structural equation modeling. The results of this study show that members’ willingness to conform to group norms, which control and govern VCs, and intrinsic motivation have significant effects on knowledge sharing in VCs, and the influence can vary depending on the type of self-awareness and level of anonymity. This study provides implications for VC management strategy and the establishment of Internet culture for sharing high-quality knowledge.

Lurkers versus Contributors: An Empirical Investigation of Knowledge Contribution Behavior in Open Innovation Communities

“…This study provides a theoretically grounded explanation and offers a new perspective on the underlying nature of lurkers in OICs, which is less understood than contributors in the existing literature [9,32]. By understanding lurkers as observers with similar psychological scaffolding, this study finds that lurkers can gain self-efficacy and motivation to learn by observing the successful contributions of other users in the community.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that the users' recognized participation in OIC significantly increases their performance and engagement, which further promotes knowledge contribution behavior [9,31,48]. Panda and Mohapatra [14] concluded that outcome ex-pectancy has a significant positive impact on user knowledge sharing behavior.…”

“…Knowledge supply Knowledge Sharing [9,16,43] Knowledge Contribution [4,19,44] Knowledge Supply [8] Knowledge Gathering [22] Knowledge Creation…”

“…Knowledge demand Knowledge Search [20] Knowledge Assessment [18] Knowledge Filtering [45] Knowledge Adoption [9] Knowledge Utilization [10] Knowledge Reuse [46] Bidirectional behavior Knowledge Exchange [15,40,47] Knowledge Transformation [4,11] Knowledge Transfer [22,38] From the perspective of knowledge supply, previous studies have mainly investigated the antecedents and consequences that influence user knowledge contribution or knowledge sharing from the perspectives of internal and external motivation, social capital, social cognition, and organizational climate. For example, Liu, Yang [48] applied collective action theory to verify the effects of individual motivation and social capital on knowledge contribution and found that structural capital had the most significant effect on knowledge sharing in OICs.…”

“…While empowering the respective stakeholders, i.e., employees, customers, and citizens, the issue of promoting participation and knowledge contribution in open innovation has been a prominent and recurring issue in open innovation research and practice [7,8]. Yet, previous studies have mostly examined contributor behavior (e.g., [9,10]), while less attention has been paid to lurkers, i.e., members who only read and observe without actively contributing to online communities and platforms [11]. While encouraging contributor engagement is crucial, stimulating lurker participation in OICs (e.g., idea crowdsourcing communities and virtual communities of practice) is equally important for at least three reasons.…”