A Study of Member Participation Behaviors in Virtual Communities

• Main Authors: Ya-Ling Chiu, 邱雅鈴
• Other Authors: Hsien-Tung Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/97690537090721855564

博士 === 元智大學 === 管理學院博士班 === 99 === Virtual communities are an important marketing tool for enhancing customer loyalty, offering valuable insights into product innovation, facilitating transactions, and so forth. Despite its importance, however, the topic has received little attention from researchers. This study proposes and tests a model of participation behavior in virtual community settings. The authors test this model using both self-reported data at two periods and objective behavioral data. Study1: This study proposes and tests a model in which prestige, perceived leader involvement, and entertainment affect member participation and loyalty through both community identification and satisfaction. This study also analyzes the moderating effects of perceived role importance in the proposed framework to enhance our understanding of membership behaviors in a virtual community. Study2: This study pursues a better understanding of member proactive behavior in virtual communities. To extend prior research, the results indicate that participation attitude, perceived behavior control, community identification and group norms affect member proactive participation behavior through participation intention. The results also show that group receptivity, group involvement, and group similarity affect member participation attitude. In addition, this study clarifies some issues in existing literature by showing that recognition for contribution positively moderates the relationship between participation intentions and proactive participation behavior. The authors conclude with some managerial and research implications of the study’s findings.