The Perception Of Site Asset Value And Its Effects On User Participation In Virtuai Communities

An increasing number of virtual communities need to compete for the attention and participation of internet users, in order to succeed and sustain their success. Given a virtual community website with basic function settings and technical support, the key challenge in sustaining itself is to maintain the continued participation of members and develop lasting relationships with them. Prior research proposed a conceptual framework to describe virtual community success, in which the two dimensions of usability and sociability are identified. However, the importance of user-generated content (knowledge) has not been extensively studied in a non-organizational context. To develop a better understanding of virtual community success and sustainability, this study expands the prior virtual community success framework to construct a conceptual model for investigating user perception of virtual community value (perceived site asset value) and the influence of value perception on participation.This dissertation attempts to explain virtual community success using two criteria:1) a given community should be recognized as valuable by users; 2) it should be capable of maintaining sufficient user participation. In particular, virtual community value is determined through technology assets, knowledge assets and community assets. This study further holds that the facets of technology assets (system quality), knowledge assets (knowledge quality and quantity) and community assets (community governance, pro-sharing norms, membership size and member reputation) will influence user perception of virtual community value. Additionally, perceived virtual community value is identified as the motivation behind user participation in virtual communities. The current study investigates five different participation modes, namely reading threads, starting a new thread, posting replies, moderating discussions and cross-community sharing.This research consists of three coherent studies:one preliminary study, one pilot study and a principal study. In the preliminary study, knowledge assets were identified as an essential component of virtual community assets from responses to open-ended questions.Thereafter, a pilot study was conducted to test the conceptual model and verify the measurements. Data were collected from a technology news site called Slashdot, and these confirmed every hypothesis in the study, demonstrating that increased technology, knowledge and community quality will result in higher perceived site value. Moreover, perceived site value was found to exert a positive effect on reading and posting activities.Ultimately, the conceptual model was expanded by adding three new constructs to fully depict virtual community value. An empirical study, which surveyed 293 members from one of the most well-known and comprehensive virtual communities in mainland China, called Tianya, was conducted to validate the extended model. The Partial Least Squares method was used to analyze the data. Our results support almost all the hypotheses in the extended model. Specifically, the findings confirm that technology assets and knowledge assets are significantly associated with perceived site asset value. As for community assets, pro-sharing norms and member reputation contribute significantly to perceived site asset value, whereas the effects of community governance and membership size are not significant. Moreover, this study demonstrates the positive impacts of perceived site asset value on different types of user participation in virtual communities. Findings from Study 2 and Study 3 are interpreted in detail, and reasons for supported and unsupported hypotheses are provided. Finally, theoretical and practical implications, in addition to future research directions, are discussed.