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ABSTRACT
Online community managers are seeking effective ways to encourage users to exhibit prosocial behaviors that help sustain the growth and effectiveness of online communities. One tactic is to set up small groups to build relationships and facilitate communications. In addition to social norms formed and shared among all community users, individuals are also subjected to potential influence from peers with whom they directly communicated within the group. This study integrated social exchange theory with group influence theory to investigate how the influences of reputation and reciprocity on users’ contributions were modified under two categories of group influences, i.e., informational and normative influence. Based on a longitudinal observation of over 3,000 members from 72 subgroups in an online community, we developed a cross-level moderation model to enrich our understanding of users’ contribution behavior with the influence of group performances. This study provides guidelines for online community administrators to create and foster effective communities for knowledge contribution and exchange.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yuan Liang
Yuan Liang is an economist in China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Company Ltd. Yuan Liang holds a Ph.D. from Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, China. Her research focuses on online community, online information presentation and personalized advertising. She is also interested in consumer behavior and value co-creation. Her research has been published in Enterprise Economy. She has given presentations in international conference such as Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems and China Association for Information Systems.
Terence T. Ow
Terence T. Ow is an Associate Professor of Information Technology in the Management Department, College of Business Administration at Marquette University. He holds a Ph.D. in Business from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the business value of IT, exploration of factors on online purchasing, bidding behavior in electronic market and participation behavior in online communities. He is also interested in decision support, the decision-making process and its implications in the development of business intelligence systems. His research has been published in information systems and management science journals including MIS Quarterly, Journal of Operations Management, Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research and other academic journals. He serves as associate editor for Journal of Organization Computing and Electronic Commerce.
Xiaolei Wang
Xiaolei Wang is a Ph.D. student in the School of Management at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China. Her research primarily focuses on customer participation, knowledge contribution and social learning in online communities. She is also interested in digital government transformation and enterprise strategy in the era of big data. Her research has been published in Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences and AIS regional conferences, including the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS), the Wuhan International Conference on E-Business (WHICEB) and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS).