Altruistic Behaviors Of In-group In Virtual Communities

Group identity is one of the influencing factors of altruistic behavior.Previous studies have found that there is in-group favoritism in helping behavior.The virtual communities are full of varieties of altruistic behaviors.In a virtual community,due to the mobility of the group identity,the connection between people and the virtual communities is loose.Previous studies have focused on the behaviors caused by the different identities,without considering the influence of closeness of the connection between participants and group.The closeness of connection with the group can also lead to different behaviors.But previous studies usually ignored it.So in this study,we used the virtual community sense to quantify the closeness of the relationship between the participants and the virtual communities to research the influence of different closeness of relationships on altruistic behaviors.In addition,The sense of virtual community could influence the behavior in virtual communities.The sense of virtual community could promote members’ dependence on the community and enhance their loyalty and participation.The members develop the awareness of sharing and a significant emotional attachment to the virtual communities.Then the members of the virtual communities generate prosocial behaviors.So we speculate that a sense of virtual community can promote altruistic behavior in virtual communities.Meanwhile,perceived similarity will also affects altruistic behavior.The higher the perceived similarity of the individual is,the more altruistic behavior will be caused to this person.In order to explore the influence of group identity and the sense of virtual community on altruistic behavior in virtual communities and the production mechanism,we conduct the following three studies.Study 1 examined the influence of the group identity of others on altruistic behavior,while Study 2 explored the effect of the sense of virtual community on the influence of the group identity of others on altruistic behavior,to provide experimental evidence for the influence of the group identity of others on altruistic behavior in virtual communities.Study 3is based on study 2,which deeply researches the mechanism of in-group altruistic behavior in virtual communities and researches the relationship among the sense of virtual community,altruistic behavior and the perceived similarity of in-group members under the condition of in-group.The following results were shown:(1)In virtual communities group identity is one of the influencing factors of altruistic behavior.In other words,there is in-group favoritism in altruistic behavior in virtual communities.(2)The sense of virtual community moderates the effect of the group identity of others on altruistic behavior.That means,people display higher levels of altruistic behaviors to people belonging to the same virtual community as themselves.In the high sense of virtual community group,the degree of altruistic behavior in the in-group condition was significantly higher than that in the control condition.In the low sense of virtual community group,there was no significant difference in altruistic behavior between the in-group and control condition.Therefore,these results prove that the group identity of others has a significant effect on altruistic behavior,and the sense of virtual community moderates the effect of the group identity of others on altruistic behavior.And under the condition of in-group,the altruistic behavior of the participants with high sense of virtual community is significantly higher than that of the participants with low sense of virtual community.This shows that the participants with high sense of virtual community will have a higher degree of altruistic behavior than the participants with low sense of virtual community when they face the same in-group members.(3)Under the condition of in-group,the sense of virtual community has a significant positive predictive effect on altruistic behavior;and the sense of virtual community has a significant positive predictive effect on the perceived similarity of in-group members.The perceived similarity of in-group members plays a partial mediating role between the sense of virtual community and altruistic behavior.When facing in-group members in the same way,the sense of virtual community can not only have a direct impact on altruistic behavior,but also through the partial intermediary effect of the perceived similarity of in-group members.