Researches On Knowledge Sharing Based On Trust Relationship In Virtual Academic Community

With the popularity of the Internet and the development of social media, the virtual academic community has become an important platform for academic exchange and knowledge sharing.On the one hand, scholars enjoy advantages of cyberspace brings to the academic interaction, such as flexibility, real-time and so on. On the other hand, the existence of lower participation willingness and lower quality of members’knowledge sharing in virtual space also caused the concern of academics.Trust is the very important factor influencing users’knowledge sharing from the existing researches, but less research discussed trust systematically and deeply.Virtual academic communities are essentially interaction network among users.With user generated content and interacting with each other in the virtual academic communities, users are in a multi-dimensional information space. Knowledge acquisition and construction not only rely on access to information, but also are influenced by the environment.What factors influence the establishment of trust relationship in the interaction process.How trust act on knowledge sharing, What different characteristics exist between the academic community and the general community.the study of these issues is not only related to a better understanding of users’interactive behaviors in social network environment, but also related to sustainable and healthy development of the virtual academic community. Therefore, based on the relevant theory of sociology, psychology, influence factors of trust and their impact on members’trust are explored systematically, and the influence of members’ trust on knowledge sharing is discussed. At last, information interaction mode of members in virtual academic community is analyzed, and trust formation mechanism of members is discussed deeply.This study combines qualitative methods with quantitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and other research methods. The data collected is analyzed by SPSS and SEM. Based on the analysis of the results, the study obtains following conclusions:(1) The differences of trust among users with different individual background characteristics in virtual academic community are examined. The result shows that it exists significant differences among different users with different time of involvement and degree in different kinds of virtual academic community.(2) Through the verification of the hypothesis, it confirms that the different kinds of trust play an important role on the quantity and quality of user’s knowledge sharing in virtual academic community.(3) Through the verification of the hypothesis, this study finds that the user’s trust of virtual academic community is influenced by personal level, interpersonal level and system level, including individual tendency to trust, personal motivation, members’ reputation, context-awareness, and system-awareness.(4) This study also summaries the user’s information interaction model in virtual academic community and explains the formation mechanism of trust. The user’s knowledge needs and social needs produce motive to pursuit self-interest, and then bring out emerge of knowledge exchange and sharing. In the process of user interaction, the trust of community members undergoes the deepening and development process of initial trust, trust choice and trust continues.