Community Attachment Formation and Its Influence on Sustainable Participation in a Digitalized Community: Focusing on Content and Social Capital of an Online Community

• Main Authors: Sungwook Lee, Do-Hyung Park
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-05-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: online community; attachment; user-generated content; sustainable participation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2935

Individuals’ lives and behaviors progressively change as information technology evolves. Through the rapid growth of information technology, individuals can access abundant information and virtual networks and create online communities for information and knowledge exchange and other intellectual pursuits. Some of the most important aspects of community success involve the engagement, participation, and active discussion of and among community members. This study focuses on the user-generated content (UGC) community and explores the mechanism for formation of community attachment from the perspective of the content capital and social capital of community members. In addition, this study demonstrates the moderating effect of membership duration on the mechanism of community attachment formation. Finally, this study reveals that the attachment formed with content and social capital can affect the decision to either continue to participate in a current UGC service site, or move to an alternative site.