Research On Impact Factors Of Social Loafing In Online Travel Community

Development of network technology makes a breakthrough of spatial and temporal limitations and innovates the online travel community.Founding and maintaining this social network is challenging for the community operators,but with opportunities.On one hand,community members gathered with same interest in travelling.They search needed information,share travelling experiences,develop offline travel companions,etc.Once this social capital network is established,more participants and loyalty will be made.It can promote the community in return and provide opportunities for advertising and spreading tourism products from vendors or agencies.On the other hand,lurking and free riding issues are increasingly argued that affects the community cohesion and development.It is advantageous to attract more participation and reduce social loafing in the online travel community.Therefore,this thesis will research on social capital,community identification and community participation convenience.Based on the view of social capital,firstly,this thesis made a full literature review and summary of the relationship between social capital and social loafing.In the study,the model of elements led to social capital on social loafing in online travel community was expanded by introducing relational dimension,structural dimension and cognitive dimension from social capital,in which community identification and participation convenience were proposed as moderates of the relationship.Secondly,according to the theoretical model,the questionnaire was designed and the model was tested with 431 valid data through online travel communities with active members.After analyzing with SPSS 20.0,the proposed model and relationships were tested by correlation analysis,multiple linear regression analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.The empirical test results show that:(1)three dimensions of social capital have impact on social loafing,including that virtuality has a significantly negative effect on social loafing,while anonymity has a significantly positive effect on social loafing in structural dimension of social capital;perceived trust and commitment have significantly negative effects on social loafing in relational dimension of social capital;task visibility and community norms have significantly negative effects on social loafing in cognitive dimension of social capital;(2)social identification has the impact on the relationship between social capital and social loafing,including that social identification has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between virtuality,anonymity and social loafing in structural dimension;has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between reciprocity,commitment and social loafing in relational dimension;has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between task visibility and social loafing in cognitive dimension;(3)community participation convenience has the impact on the relationship between social capital and social loafing,including that participation convenience has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between virtuality and social loafing,while has significantly negative moderating effects on the relationship between anonymity and social loafing in structural dimension;has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between perceived trust,commitment and social loafing in relational dimension;has significantly positive moderating effects on the relationship between task visibility and social loafing in cognitive dimension.According to hypothesis testing results,this paper tried to suggest for the online travel community constructing and developing that: combining online with offline community activities;establishing incentive mechanism and reciprocity mechanism;being aware of community norms and shared language;constructing the sub-community and precision marketing;optimizing the environment of online community and operation.