• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.129-150
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• 2023

Purpose - This study is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and aims to explore the decision-making mechanisms of consumers participating in value co-creation activities within virtual brand communities. Methodology - The research involved a comprehensive survey of 405 participants from various virtual brand communities. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used for data analysis, applying SPSS and AMOS to test the hypotheses. The study focused on community rules and regulations, community experience and community trust. Results - The research found that community rules and regulations significantly impact subjective norms and perceived behavioral control, but not directly influence consumer attitudes. Community experience positively affected consumer attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. Community trust was found to positively influence these aspects of consumer decision-making. However, a gap was identified in the direct influence of perceived behavioral control on actual consumer behavior. Implications - The findings of this study contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of factors affecting consumer behavior in virtual brand communities. It underscores the necessity for community managers to develop strategies that consider these internal decision-making mechanisms, facilitating more effective community engagement. The study also identifies a potential area for future research in the direct influence of perceived behavioral control on actual consumer behavior.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.71-92
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• 2005

As the Internet establishes and reinforces connections between people, virtual community is becoming one of considerable business model. We believe that benefits of the virtual community go to both customer and vendor organizing virtual community. Despite the explosive growth of virtual communities on the Internet, empirical research has been focused to study the issues related to characteristics of virtual community The objective of this study is to enhance the understanding about virtual communities as an e-business model by Customer Relation Management and by empirically validating their effect on the performance of website. Through path analysis, we find support for relations behavior influence the online commitment. we also find that the online commitment enhance the organization citizenship behavior. Finally, we discuss several theoretical and practical Implications, and suggest limitations for research and future research issue.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.35-46
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• 2003

This study focuses on the effect of Social Scaffolding of virtual community on its growth and thrift. The research model proposed in this study is that communities, which have goof social scaffolding, tend to grow and thrive. Social Scaffolding refers to those aspects of a site Purpose, Places, Profiles, leaders, Roles, Rules, Cyclic Events, integrating with the real world, and Subgroups. The data were collected from 100 virtual communities in Daum Communications and analyzed in this study. Multiple regression is used to analyze the relationship of variables. The result is following ; purpose, loaders, rules, integrating with the real world support the effects of social scaffolding of virtual community on its growth and thrift, but profiles, roles, cyclic events do not. The result of this study implies the importance of social scaffolding of virtual community for re-searches, and developers.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.135-158
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• 2016

Purpose Virtual communities change the way people communicate and share information. The purpose of this paper is to find how internet social capital and individual motivations influence the information sharing in virtual communities. This study considers the social capital theory, individual motivations, information sharing, and community promotion to construct a theoretical model. Design/methodology/approach Social capital focuses on three dimensions that include 6 factors: social interaction ties, centrality, shared language, shared vision, trust and reciprocity. Individual motivations include 2 factors: reputation and enjoy helping. To confirm the research model and the hypotheses, 426 effective questionnaires were used for the final analysis. Findings The result of data analysis demonstrates that social interaction ties, centrality, shared language, trust, and reciprocity were significant in affecting information sharing behaviors. However, reputation, enjoy helping, and shared vision does not appear to have a significant influence on information sharing behaviors. The information sharing was positively related to community promotion.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.89-108
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• 2015

Social networking communities (SNCs) are media designed to facilitate social interaction using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. SNCs can constitute individuals' their own profiles in the online environment and share texts, images and photos in a variety ways. In other words, one of the other motivators is knowledge sharing. Various sites, such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, and Hi5 are categorized as SNCs. SNCs have become increasingly popular in recent years among youths, especially students, who use them to build social networks. This study examines whether this usage of SNCs inculcates a sense of community among their members. Several studies have examined the role of a sense of community through increased usage in the context of virtual communities. Although this result may be true of virtual communities, this paper contends that the opposite relationship prevails in the case of SNCs because members interact to build networks and are not obliged to interact. The results reveal that maintaining long-term interactions in the SNCs is helpful in building a sense of community in SNCs. Although short-term usage may not boost the development of a sense of community in SNCs, it does matter if the premise is for a long-term commitment to SNCs. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

• Proceeding of Spring/Autumn Annual Conference of KHA
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.349-353
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• 2008

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. Apartment houses provided networks that are well equipped with internet websites, which build up the houses as a virtual space unit. This study attempted to conducted the questionnaire research for apartment occupants in order to investigate their recognition of and participation in the virtual community and demand for the classified contents The results are as follows. 1) First of all, some easy-access programs are necessary to be groped while aggressive promotional strategies for virtual community that create interests of residents are required to make progress to increase the participation for virtual community 2) 'Gender', 'the form of ownership' and 'level of using the Internet' show significant differences in the case of 'needs in the like-minded people's association', the participation of residents that is induced by both online and offline can cause positive effects on community activity 3) Needs in community enrichment are generally high so that various contents development related to those are necessary. 4) Effects of virtual community on the residential community are on the whole affirmative.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.71-90
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• 2003

Virtual communities have been suggested to play important roles such as attracting customers, building customer loyalty, and leading to commercial transactions. Little research in marketing has focused on virtual communities in spite of its importance indicated by many practitioners and conceptual studies. More specifically, little research has empirically examined factors of customer participation and its consequences. This research investigate if customers' participation motives in virtual communities affect their sense of community and if sense of community affects customers' loyalty towards and purchase intentions from the website offering the community service. One hundred ninety six questionnaires were collected from individuals who have participated in and have been involved in online activities in various virtual communities. Major results of this research can be summarized as follows. First, participation motives employed significantly affected customers' sense of community and more specifically, perceived ease of use and perceived playfulness had a large influence on the customers' sense of community. Second, customers' sense of community positively affected their loyalty toward the community and more specifically, membership and emotional connection had a large influence on loyalty. Third, customers' sense of community did not affect directly their purchase intentions. Fourth, customers' loyalty toward virtual communities had a significant, positive, although marginal, influence on their purchase intentions.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.19-45
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• 2010

Virtual Communities, which are formed on the Internet, are expected to serve the needs of members for e-collaboration, e-communication, information and knowledge sharing. The executives of organizations should consider virtual community as a new innovation or knowledge pool since members share knowledge. However, many virtual community have failed due to members' low willingness to engage and furthermore to share knowledge with other members. Thus, there is a need to understand and foster the determinants of members' sense of belonging behavior in virtual community. This study develops an integrated model designed to investigate and explain the relationships between contextual factors, personal perceptions of virtual community, usability, trust and sense of belonging in using a certain virtual community. Empirical data was collected from 201 and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) to verify the fit of the hypothetical model. The results show that the perceived usability and community trust of members significantly influences sense of belonging in using the virtual community, and information quality, system quality, familiarity on the virtual community are significantly influence the usability but not reputation. And I confirmed that perceived shared vision and responsiveness play the role of determinants in making the member's trust, perceived risk influence the making community trust in directly. The results of the study can be used to identify the motivation underlying members' sense of belonging in a certain virtual community by investigating the impacts of contextual factors and personal perceptions on virtual community, the integrated model better explains behavior than other proposed models. This study might help executives of virtual communities and organizations to manage and promote these determinants of sense of belonging to stimulate members' willingness to engage the community and futhermore enhance their virtual community loyalty.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.83-98
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• 2021

Research collaboration is an important strategy to improve research output, and virtual academic communities (VACs) have become an important platform to collaborate on. This paper reveals the influencing factors of researchers' collaboration intention in VACs from two attributes: individual, and inter-members. On the basis of the Social Cognitive Theory, Social Exchange Theory, social network theory, and Five-Factor Model, this paper constructed a model demonstrating the influencing factors of VACs researchers' collaboration intention. A self-administered questionnaire was employed on members of four VACs in China to collect data; subsequently, 558 usable responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The result showed that openness, conscientiousness, reciprocity, trust, and the social network characteristic had a significant influence on the collaboration intention of researchers in VACs, while self-efficacy, agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, and experience had no significant effects on the collaboration intention of researchers in VACs. This model plays a positive role in promoting the research collaboration intention of Chinese VACs researchers and in guiding the construction of VAC platforms.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.41-72
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• 2019

Purpose Virtual communities (VCs) are becoming ever more important in these days, sometimes more than offline communities. Notably, they have become significant sources of knowledge sharing. Therefore, in order to foster a VC, it is very important to understand why people share their knowledge in the VC. Under this background, this paper aims at proposing the behavioral model best explains knowledge sharing activities in VCs. Design/methodology/approach We basically design our behavioral model for knowledge sharing in VCs based on theory of reasoned action (TRA). However, to understand knowledge sharing in VCs better, we specify knowledge sharing by dividing it into knowledge contribution and knowledge use. Also, instead of 'subjective norm', we adopt 'sense of virtual community (SOVC)' as a main social factor, which has been found to be important in the literature. We also include the antecedents such as 'quality of the shared knowledge', 'trust in community members', 'passion of the community leader', 'reciprocity', and 'self efficacy', which affect VC users' attitude towards knowledge sharing and SOVC. To test the hypotheses in our proposed model, we collected 253 valid surveys from the VC users. Structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS 23 is employed to assess the relationships proposed as the hypotheses. Findings Major findings are as follows. SOVC positively affects both intention to contribute knowledge and intention to use knowledge. And, trust in community members positively affects the attitude towards knowledge use and SOVC. The attitude towards knowledge use is also affected by the quality of the shared knowledge. Reciprocity is found to strongly positively affect the attitude towards knowledge contribution. However, passion of the community leader and self efficacy are found to have insignificant effect on SOVC and the attitude towards knowledge contribution respectively. Our study sheds a light on how to foster VCs from the perspective of knowledge management.