An Empirical Study Of The Motivations For Knowledge Contribution In Virtual Academic Communities

With the popularization of the Internet and the development of network technology,traditional forms of academic journals and academic conferences continue to promote academic exchanges.At the same time,virtual academic communities provide a new way of knowledge exchange for the public.With high concentration of academic information,strong interaction and rapid feedback,a growing number of teachers and students in universities,researchers in scientific research institutions have begun to use virtual academic communities.Knowledge is the core resource of virtual academic communities,and it is also the decisive factor for the existence,development and expansion of communities.The knowledge of the virtual academic communities come mainly from users.But at present,the phenomenon of "Free-Riding" in community users is becoming more and more serious,which leads to decrease the valuable knowledge in the communities.In addition,these communities are gradually filled with poor quality of knowledge information,therefore,the quality of knowledge has become another problem in the healthy development of these communities.At this point,how to facilitate users to contribute more and better knowledge has become one of the most concerned topics for virtual academic community operators.The key to solve above problem is to understand and grasp the driving force of knowledge contribution.Therefore,this paper aims at two different scenarios of knowledge contribution behavior;knowledge contribution quality and knowledge contribution quantity to discuss the motivation of knowledge contribution in virtual academic communities.Based on self-determination theory and social exchange theory,this paper firstly put forward theoretical model and research hypothesis.Secondly,after the design and delivery of the questionnaire,we use SPSS 19.0 to analyze the data.Through empirical analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions:Intrinsic motivation(enjoy helping,knowledge self-efficacy,sense of belonging)and extrinsic motivation(reputation,reciprocity,rewards,self-development)showed a significant positive correlation with the quality and quantity of knowledge contribution in virtual academic communities.Reciprocity,sense of belonging,knowledge self-efficacy and enjoy helping are the key motivations for knowledge contribution quality,while knowledge self-efficacy,reciprocity and sense of belonging are the key motivations for knowledge contribution quantity.In addition,there are significant differences between knowledge contribution quality and knowledge contribution quantity in different virtual academic communities.There are also significant differences among knowledge self-efficacy,rewards and self-development motivations in different virtual academic communities.Finally,based on the empirical analysis,this paper puts forward some measures and suggestions on how to promote users' knowledge contribution quality and knowledge contribution quantity.