The Role of the Sense of Community in the Sustainability of Social Network Sites

ABSTRACT

The evolution of information technologies enables new forms of communication and facilitates the emergence of different types of virtual communities, such as social networks. While some social network services have succeeded, others have failed. Understanding the factors that affect the sustainability of social network sites is important for both research and practice. We draw on the sense of community theory to develop a nomological framework of antecedents and consequences associated with sense of community in social network sites. We evaluate the framework with a survey of 506 Facebook users. We find that sense of community has a strong effect on information consumption and contribution, as well as exit intentions among social network site users, thus highlighting the important role of sense of community in the sustainability of social network sites. We also find that both system-related (sense of place associated with the social networking site) and social (social interaction) factors contribute to the development of sense of community. The nomological framework developed in the current study provides a theoretical foundation that could be adapted to study other factors that influence the development of sense of community across different virtual community contexts.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES:

• Online communities
• psychological ownership
• sense of community
• sense of place
• social identity
• social network sites
• sustainability of social networks

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stanislav Mamonov

STANISLAV MAMONOV ([email protected]; corresponding author) is an assistant professor in the Information Management and Business Analytics Department at the Feliciano Business School, Montclair State University. He received his Ph.D. in business at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). His research focuses on privacy, intellectual property rights, and other factors that affect the sustainability of information exchanges. He is also a serial entrepreneur and the founder and chief executive officer of MintFinder, a B2B Big Data analytics platform. His research has been published in Communications of the Association of Information Systems, Journal of Information Privacy and Security, and other venues.

Marios Koufaris

MARIOS KOUFARIS ([email protected]) is a professor of information systems at the Zicklin School of Business of Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). He received a Ph.D. in information systems from the Stern School of Business, New York University. His research focuses on the determinants of user beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in different contexts. His work has been published in Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and Information and Management.

Raquel Benbunan-Fich

RAQUEL BENBUNAN-FICH ([email protected]) is an associate professor of information systems at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). She received her ph.d. in management information systems from Rutgers University. Her research interests include virtual teams and virtual communities, user behavior and multitasking, usability of Web-based systems, and faculty productivity. She has published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Information and Management, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and other journals.