• Proceedings of the Korea Inteligent Information System Society Conference
• /
• 2004.11a
• /
• pp.375-383
• /
• 2004

Despite the fact that virtual communities on the Internet have been growing at an exponential rate in recent years, little research has been done on the characteristics of virtual communities. In order to better understand and manage the activities of virtual communities, a theoretical model is proposed in this paper. The objective of this paper is to clarify the factors as they are related to the Technology Acceptance Model. In particular the relationship among identities, trust, and other factors are hypothesized. Using the Technology Acceptance Model, this research showed that the importance of identity and trust in virtual communities. The members of virtual communities interact continuously and share an identity. According to the identity type, different ways of stimulating the members are necessary in order to facilitate participation in activities of virtual communities. The virtual communities of a more utilitarian identity are more sensitive to trust in members than trust in the service provider, and members of a more utilitarian identity are inclined to exchange information with each other.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.53-74
• /
• 2012

A challenge in fostering virtual communities is the continuous supply of knowledge, namely members' willingness to contribute knowledge to their communities. Previous research argues that giving away knowledge eventually causes the possessors of that knowledge to lose their unique value to others, benefiting all except the contributor. Furthermore, communication within virtual communities involves a large number of participants with different social backgrounds and perspectives. The establishment of mutual understanding to comprehend conversations and foster knowledge contribution in virtual communities is inevitably more difficult than face-to-face communication in a small group. In spite of these arguments, evidence suggests that individuals in virtual communities do engage in social behaviors such as knowledge contribution. It is important to understand why individuals provide their valuable knowledge to other community members without a guarantee of returns. In virtual communities, knowledge is inherently rooted in individual members' experiences and expertise. This personal nature of knowledge requires social interactions between virtual community members for knowledge transfer. This study employs the social capital theory in order to account for interpersonal relationship factors and identity theory for individual and group factors that may affect knowledge contribution. First, social capital is the relationship capital which is embedded within the relationships among the participants in a network and available for use when it is needed. Social capital is a productive resource, facilitating individuals' actions for attainment. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1997) identify three dimensions of social capital and explain theoretically how these dimensions affect the exchange of knowledge. Thus, social capital would be relevant to knowledge contribution in virtual communities. Second, existing research has addressed the importance of identity in facilitating knowledge contribution in a virtual context. Identity in virtual communities has been described as playing a vital role in the establishment of personal reputations and in the recognition of others. For instance, reputation systems that rate participants in terms of the quality of their contributions provide a readily available inventory of experts to knowledge seekers. Despite the growing interest in identities, however, there is little empirical research about how identities in the communities influence knowledge contribution. Therefore, the goal of this study is to better understand knowledge contribution by examining the roles of social capital and identity in virtual communities. Based on a theoretical framework of social capital and identity theory, we develop and test a theoretical model and evaluate our hypotheses. Specifically, we propose three variables such as cohesiveness, reciprocity, and commitment, referring to the social capital theory, as antecedents of knowledge contribution in virtual communities. We further posit that members with a strong identity (self-presentation and group identification) contribute more knowledge to virtual communities. We conducted a field study in order to validate our research model. We collected data from 192 members of virtual communities and used the PLS method to analyse the data. The tests of the measurement model confirm that our data set has appropriate discriminant and convergent validity. The results of testing the structural model show that cohesion, reciprocity, and self-presentation significantly influence knowledge contribution, while commitment and group identification do not significantly influence knowledge contribution. Our findings on cohesion and reciprocity are consistent with the previous literature. Contrary to our expectations, commitment did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This result may be due to the fact that knowledge contribution was voluntary in the virtual communities in our sample. Another plausible explanation for this result may be the self-selection bias for the survey respondents, who are more likely to contribute their knowledge to virtual communities. The relationship between self-presentation and knowledge contribution was found to be significant in virtual communities, supporting the results of prior literature. Group identification did not significantly affect knowledge contribution in this study, inconsistent with the wealth of research that identifies group identification as an important factor for knowledge sharing. This conflicting result calls for future research that examines the role of group identification in knowledge contribution in virtual communities. This study makes a contribution to theory development in the area of knowledge management in general and virtual communities in particular. For practice, the results of this study identify the circumstances under which individual factors would be effective for motivating knowledge contribution to virtual communities.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.73-85
• /
• 2003

As the number of virtual communities is explosively increasing these days, many papers have been published on the effective and efficient use of those communities. Among various aspects of virtual communities, this paper has an interest in the collective power of consumers that may be generated naturally by the interactions among members of communities. If consumerism might be built in virtual communities, societal marketing could be implemented positively through those communities. The result shows that though societal marketing has not been implemented yet, the potential turns out to be great.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
• /
• v.21 no.12spc
• /
• pp.712-718
• /
• 2021

Virtual communities are studied to analyze their characteristic features, types, and tole to modern society. The article is aimed at creating a classification of virtual communities according to specific characteristics, which can be used to model the interaction, and necessity of components that are important for the community. The classification of virtual communities will contribute to their better performance and satisfy the users' needs in information. The study reveals the value structure of virtual communities, educational and communicative influence, and the possible threats these communities may bring to society and security.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.57-66
• /
• 2008

In the past, strong social bands, which had spontaneous communities, existed in Korean traditional society. However, while it's developing through industrialization; monolithic apartment houses were introduced which causes less interaction between neighbors. With the growing attention to the higher living quality, various schemes to revitalize the community spirits have been groped, including to improve in hardhearted neighborhood relationships and to cope with the dreariness in the city. With the development of the internet and the spread of 'digital home', the communities in cyber space have been especially revitalized since the information-oriented society. In a move to strengthen the communities in apartment complexes, this study tries to find the revitalization scheme for virtual communities in apartment complexes by analyzing the contents of its web sites and understanding the world of virtual community. These are compared and analyzed. The related virtual communities ("cafe" or "blogs") are also analyzed. The results are as follows. 1) There are some differences among the contents provided by apartment virtual community developing companies, still, it could be categorized into four types; "apartment complex introduction and management information" "community revitalization" "living guide" "individual services" 2) The contents provided by self-organized communities of residents neither require additional charge nor special membership for information while the formation is not systematized. 3) In the comparison of apartment virtual community developing companies with residents self-organized communities, "apartment complex introduction and management information" on freeboard, notice, request and Q&A, and "community revitalization" on communication board are both provided throughout the web sites. 4) The contents provided by apartment virtual community developing companies makes the information available in a wide range with managers, on the other hand, self-organized communities emphasize on showing attachment and concern of residents and requiring communications between neighborhoods.

• Knowledge Management Research
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.35-55
• /
• 2011

By providing a number of unprecedented knowledge sources, virtual communities have stimulated interests in knowledge sourcing Specifically, virtual communities have triggered fundamental changes in the ways that people interact with one another. Thus, there is a critical need to examine how people try to behave for sourcing knowledge in virtual communities, particularly in terms of the demand-side perspective of knowledge. To address the knowledge gap regarding knowledge sourcing behavior from the knowledge recipients' side, this study draws upon GPA(goal-plan-action) theory with both the social cognitive theory and the goal-setting theory as overarching theories. Furthermore, we apply past experience in virtual communities and trust in knowledge providers as moderating variables to deeply understand the knowledge recipients' behavior. We expect to present theoretical and practical implications through our findings, which are relevant to cognitive goal-setting and knowledge sourcing behavior. In the theoretical perspective, this study illustrates how knowledge recipients determine knowledge sourcing behavior. Based on our findings, this study has practical implications for virtual communities to effectively balance knowledge repositories and knowledge management systems with knowledge providers and recipients.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.69-86
• /
• 2007

As most of firms related with P2P services change their free services into fee-charging services, the problems of intellectual property rights are solved to satisfactory extent. Accordingly, P2P systems become more popular with the general public. In this respect, it is thought to be very important to research on the critical factors affecting usage of P2P systems. Although it is strongly expected that the characteristics of users activities in virtual communities affect the intention to re-use P2P systems, relatively few attention have been paid to this question. Therefore, this paper is to present empirical evidence to explain how the characteristics of users activities in virtual communities affect re-use intention of P2P services. The theoretical contribution of this study is that the characteristics of users activities in virtual communities is theoretically derived from the comprehensive literature review and the logical reasoning, and that the research model of the relationship between the users activities' characteristics in virtual community and the re-use intention of P2P services is proposed and empirically validated, which is expected to expand explaining power of the TAM(Technological Acceptance Model). Also, the practical implication is to provide the guideline to support the successful strategic planning for development and.operation of P2P services through the virtual communities.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
• /
• v.22 no.4
• /
• pp.181-203
• /
• 2015

Customers who show high level of brand loyalty are one of the most important corporate assets. Accordingly, customers' brand loyalty has been addressed as a critical issue for the business success. In today's business environment where business channels to customers have expanded and diversified continuously, especially the use of social network services (SNSs) have drawn a lot of attention as an effective channel to promote customers' brand loyalty. This study, thus, analyzes the impact of the virtual brand community identity on customers' brand loyalty, focusing on the role of the sense of communities as mediators. The analysis was conducted by using the data collected from 239 users of Chinese virtual brand communities. The results show that both virtual brand community identity and the sense of communities significantly influence on customers' brand loyalty. Furthermore, the results reveal that both of the community belongingness and community trust composing the sense of community partially mediate virtual brand community and brand loyalty as hypothesized. Based on the results, the strategic implications are suggested and discussed, focusing on improving the customers' brand loyalty in the context of SNSs. Our findings and discussions can help companies develop their customer strategies for utilizing the virtual communities to strengthen customers' brand loyalty.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.399-422
• /
• 2013

The aim of this study is to find the model that best explains members' continued use intention in virtual communities by comparing technical and social perspectives applied in IS context. With the eight major variables identified from prior studies, four alternative models were formulated:1) A base model from Information Systems (IS) continuance perspective, 2) IS continuance model with technology-acceptance perspective, 3) IS continuance model with social-capital perspective, and 4) IS continuance model with socio-technical combined perspective. The adequacies of these four models with different perspective highlighted were tested using survey data collected from virtual community users in Korea. The findings indicated that the IS continuance model and social-capital perspective is the most efficient model that best explains the members' continued use intention in virtual communities.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.57-79
• /
• 2010

In a virtual community, one can possess multiple identities and pretend to be different by creating self-identity in contrast with his or her actual self. Does false identity undermine the qualitative growth of a virtual community by reducing members' accountability? Or does it stimulate their contributive behaviors by ensuring freedom of speech? It is imperative to understand the effects of multi-identity considering the distinct properties of a virtual community in which people easily change their identities at little or no cost. To answer these questions, we adopted the concept of self-discrepancy from the social psychology theory rooted in the concept of the self and developed a theoretical model to predict quality of contribution of the individual member in virtual communities. Based on the self-discrepancy theory, we first identified two different domains of the self: (1) an "actual self" that consists of attributes that the person believes he or she currently possesses in real life and (2) a "cyber self" that consists of attributes the person believes he or she possesses in a virtual community. Next, we derived an index for two different types of self-discrepancy by using the differences between the actual and the cyber identities: Personal Self-discrepancy and Social Self-discrepancy. Personal Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's intelligence, education, and expertise. Social Self-discrepancy reflects the degree of discrepancy between actual and cyber identity regarding a person's morality, sociability, and accordance with social norms. Finally, we linked them with sense of virtual community, perceived privacy rights, and quality of contribution to examine how having a multi-identity influences an individual's psychological state and contributive behaviors in a virtual community. The results of the analysis based on 266 respondents showed that Social Self-discrepancy negatively influenced both the Sense of Virtual Community and Perceived Privacy Rights, while Personal Self-discrepancy negatively influenced only Perceived Privacy Rights, thereby resulting in reduced quality of contribution in virtual communities. Based on the results of this analysis, we can explain the dysfunctions of multi-identity in virtual communities. First, people who pretend to be different by engaging in socially undesirable behaviors under their alternative identities are more likely to suffer lower levels of psychological wellbeing and thus experience lower levels of sense of virtual community than others. Second, people do not perceive a high level of privacy rights reflecting catharsis, recovery, or autonomy, even though they create different selves and engage in socially undesirable behaviors in a virtual community. Third, people who pretend to be different persons in terms of their intelligence, education, or expertise also indirectly debase the quality of contribution by decreasing perceived privacy rights. The results suggest that virtual community managers should pay more attention to the negative influences exercised by multi-identity on the quality of contribution, thereby controlling the need to create alternative identities in virtual communities. We hope that more research will be conducted on this underexplored area of multi-identity and that our theoretical framework will serve as a useful conceptual tool for all endeavors.