Users' Intentions To Continued Use Of Online Knowledge Service Platforms:Influencing Factors Including Users' Knowledge Characteristics

With the rapid development of modern information civilization,the degrees of openness,pertinence and commercialization of knowledge are getting higher and higher,and the era of knowledge economy has already arrived.Internet has shortened the distance between people and information,while knowledge service has shortened the distance between people and knowledge.As a medium of knowledge sharing,online knowledge service platforms give ordinary users the opportunity to share their own high-quality knowledge and become the elite in the field.They also provide users with a way of in-depth communication with industry experts.The business model of online know-ledge service enables more people to obtain high-quality knowledge and solutions at low costs.It can also motivate knowledge providers to deliver quality knowledge.It is also served as an efficient information-screening channel for users.At the same time,the platform providers can also get a profit margin in the process of knowledge circulation.However,there are many types of knowledge service platforms and knowledge products in the online knowledge markets.Further,the quality of content is uneven.Users' withdraw rate from the knowledge market is still very high.Because users' continued use of the services is the key for knowledge providers and platforms to make profits from "knowledge realization",what influence users'continued intention of using online knowledge service platforms has become one of the most concerns of many knowledge service platforms.Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2(UTAUT2),this thesis investigates the impacts of a selected set of factors on the users'intentions to continued use of online knowledge services platforms.Specifically,this research extends the UTAUT2 model by considering two new constructs in terms of self-efficacy and knowledge anxiety,which measure the users' knowledge characteristics of using online knowledge service platform.Moreover,the moderating roles of user gender and knowledge service platform use experience are further discussed.The research model and hypotheses were tested by collecting data from 294 online knowledge service platform users.The results indicate that performance expectation,price value,habit,facilitating conditions,self-efficacy and knowledge anxiety directly affect users' intentions to continued use online knowledge service platforms.Self-efficacy positively affects users'performance expectations and price value.Knowledge anxiety has a positive impact on performance expectation.In terms of gender differences,men's self-efficacy and women's knowledge anxiety play stronger roles in the intentions to continued use of the platform.The innovation of this research lies in that it introduces the knowledge characteristics of the users of the online knowledge service platform,explains the mechanisms of various factors affecting the users' intention to continued use of the platforms more comprehensively,and integates the self-efficacy theory and the user psychology research with the theory of information system use.Finally,practical suggestions are proposed on how to choose knowledge content and operation mode for online knowledge service platform,which can encourage users stay on the platform and provide reference for the optimization and development of knowledge service.