Research On The Factors Affecting Social Q&A Site’s Knowledge Sharing And Its Interaction Effect

Knowledge sharing is vital in research on knowledge management. Since it can bring benefits to individuals and organizations, scholars have done many researches in this field. In recent years, with the development of internet technology and the increased demand for personalized knowledge, social Q&A sites grew quickly, adding new channel to knowledge sharing. Social Q&A site is a kind of online social networking community which enables its user to edit text by themselves and to establish relationship by discussing different topics. All the Q&A content makes these sites important platforms for knowledge sharing, but at the same time, knowledge sharing level on these sites is relatively low due to poor connection between users and negative impacts of the internet, this forms the bottleneck problem for these sites.In order to achieve the development of social Q&A site in the long run, the willingness of users has to be promoted. However, traditional knowledge sharing research is usually seen in those offline entities or organizations, there is a lack of theoretical basis on knowledge sharing in online community, especially online communities with domestic cultural background. That’s why researches on factors affecting social Q&A site’s knowledge sharing requires more effort.This thesis researches on the interaction of factors affecting social Q&A site’s knowledge sharing based on social Q&A site. The author built a model including reciprocity, trust, perceived value and their interaction effects on knowledge sharing on the basis of social exchange theory. Then the author used the method of regression and empirical studies to prove the hypothesis by collecting data through questionnaires. The result shows that three variables have strong positive impacts on knowledge sharing, interaction between reciprocity, trust, perceived value together with interaction between three variables also pose significant impacts on knowledge sharing. This thesis explains the result thoroughly and gives suggestion accordingly, in the hope of giving theoretical support and constructive instructions to the development of social Q&A site.