Research On The Relationship Between Knowledge Sharing Intention To Knowledge Sharing Behavior In Professional Virtual Communities

Technology changes life. In the period that the internet technologies were not developed, human beings could not acquire knowledge without books or face to face contact. This kind of knowledge interaction spread quite slowly and had a high requirement on time and space. With the development and evolution of internet technologies, there are more choices for people to share knowledge. Internet technologies establish a virtual world in which information can spread fast and quite far and countless information can be stored by breaking the limitation of time and physical environment and changes the way of knowledge sharing in depth. For the researchers, professional virtual communities become another classroom. There are many individuals with the same background gather in the professional communities, facilitating their work and learning. The mobile internet can help people to use their spare time which is short and fragmentary to get the information they need or to share knowledge with other users in a professional virtual community. This kind of knowledge sharing behavior can is not restricted by their locations. With the help of the mobile internet, they can log in a professional virtual community anytime anywhere. So, maybe, if the users who use mobile equipment to log in a professional virtual community can share knowledge with other users in a short time, other users who use computer cannot do it in the same time. That means, to the users who use different ways to log in professional virtual communities, time will influence their behavior of knowledge sharing differently.In the theory of planned behavior, time is a key element of perceived behavior control. The theory of planned behavior asserts that the degree of how individuals can control their behavior can affect their behavior through intention. Other researchers modified the theory of planned behavior and divided perceived behavior control into internal control and external control. They proposed that time is a part of external control which can moderate the relationship between intention and knowledge sharing behavior. Based on previous studies, this research investigates the perceived time hinder of users using different ways to share knowledge in professional communities and explores the relationship between knowledge sharing intention and behavior, and the moderating effect of perceived time hinder.This paper investigates the users in the largest professional community in China, www.emuch.net, using questionnaire method and data mining method. The result shows that, for the users in emuch, there is a significant difference in the perceived time hinder between the users who only use computer(called computer group below) and who only use mobile equipment(called mobile equipment group below) and who use both computer and mobile equipment(called mixed group below) to share knowledge. Moreover, the perceived time hinder of five knowledge sharing behavior in emuch shows different in ways of logging in. The perceived time hinder of mobile equipment group to browse, reply and posting for help is significantly below the mixed group and computer group. However, the perceived time hinder to repast show no difference between the three groups. The perceived time hinder of mobile equipment group is significantly higher than the computer group and mixed group. What is more, perceived time hinder has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between knowledge sharing intention and behavior. At last, we discuss about the result, point out the limitation of this paper and what can be done in the future research.