A Study Of Individual Knowledge Contributing Motivation In Virtual Communities

Knowledge sharing motivation in virtual communities has gained great attention in recent years. Thanks to the rapid evolution of Internet and Web2.0technology, virtual communities become a major venue for knowledge sharing because of its characteristics of anonymity, promptness, interactivity, convenience and achievability. However, without constant sharing activities, virtual communities could fall because of lack of knowledge source. Actually most of the communities today rely on a small group of highly active members to contribute knowledge while the majority of others are lurkers that only consume knowledge rather than contribute, which are regarded as free-riders. In order to boost individual knowledge sharing activities and ensure the sustainable development of virtual communities, we must understand how members are motivated to take action to contribute to the community and then develop proper incentives based on such understanding to drive sharing activities. Previous literature have mainly focused on the psychological motivations such as self-efficacy, enjoying oneself in helping others, monetary incentives, image and reciprocal reasons, derived from social exchange theory, social capital theory and motivation theory, and value theory etc., and many of these factors are validated through empirical analysis. While the present study will adopt a psychological ownership view and utilize social network analysis (SNA) approaches to investigate knowledge sharing motivations in virtual communities among individuals occupying different network positions.The present study adopts SNA and develops a social network among virtual community members based on their interaction. Moreover, it uses psychological ownership and its three dimensions (self-efficacy, sense of belongingness, self-identity) to explain individual motivations, and discuss how members in different positions of social network are motivated through the lens of psychological ownership. The author tracked the virtual community of BBS of Fudan University and recorded all the posting and replying behaviors in7months and built a social network based on these interactions. In addition to that the author also conducted a survey with carefully adapted scale to measure psychological constructs and finally bring out an integrated model for knowledge sharing motivation. Data analysis is performed and hypotheses are tested. The results show virtual community members’ network position influences his psychological ownership towards the community. This study aims to shed light on how to design the motivation mechanism to boost knowledge sharing in virtual communities.