The Impact Of Audience Size On User's Knowledge Contribution Quantity In Social Q&A

With the development of WEB 2.0,Internet users' behaviors have transformed from browsing and broadcasting information to generating contents and knowledge.User-generated contents have become an important information and knowledge source.Among different kinds of UGC,knowledge in online Q&A sites is highly valuable since it is knowledge oriented and professional.Online knowledge community users'contributing pattern has always been a hot research spot.Nowadays,many Q&A sites incorporated social network mechanisms into their platforms,thus their users can follow each other which result in complex social networks.Although some research has touched this topic,the impact of social network characteristics,especially users'audience size on their knowledge contribution quantities still needs further investigation We should notice that previous research got contradictory results about the impacts of users' audience size on their contribution quantity.This research tension needs to be explored further.To reconcile this research tension,this research classifies users' contributions into two categories,namely solicited and voluntary knowledge contribution.Further,this research involves user types and peer recognition as moderate variables to investigate the audience size's actual effects under different situations.In this research,first,a comprehensive literature review was conducted on topics about knowledge contribution motivating factors,knowledge types,and user types.Then research hypotheses and a research model were developed.As for users'activity records,I collected a large volume of cross-sectional data and longitude panel data.Then a zero-inflated negative binomial model and a fixed effect negative binomial model were applied respectively to analyze the two data sets and examine the hypotheses.This research has three key findings:(1)Audience size negatively relates to a user's solicited knowledge contribution quantity,while positively relates to a user's voluntary knowledge contribution quantity.(2)Peer recognition can offset the negative effect of audience size on solicited KC,while boost the audience size's positive effect on voluntary KC.(3)Core users in Q&A sites are more sensitive to the audience size's negative effect than periphery users.However,for core users,the audience size has a weaker positive impact on voluntary knowledge contribution quantity than peripheral users.This research has several innovation points.Through separating knowledge contributions into solicited and voluntary contributions,this research offers a new perspective for future research about knowledge management.Incorporating the moderating effects of user types and peer recognition helps to explain the complex phenomena in social Q&A sites.The innovations and finding of-this research have several theoretical and practical implications.