Driving Individuals’ Subjective Wellbeing in Virtual Communities through Interpersonal and Impersonal Mechanisms

In this study, we integrate different research streams—attachment, social identity, and organizational citizenship behavior—to have a better understanding of determinants of individual subjective wellbeing in the context of a virtual community (VC). Attachment is an emotion-laden, target-specific bond between a person and a specific object. Attachment is an important predictor of citizenship behavior, and therefore an important aspect to understand and to enhance in order to promote citizenship behavior. We identify two broad categories of virtual community citizenship behavior: citizenship behaviors directed toward benefitting other individuals (VCCBI), and citizenship behaviors directed toward benefitting the VC (VCCBC). We also identify two distinct attachments: emotional bonds among community members and emotional bonds to the community identity. This study proposes a dual attachment model in which subjective wellbeing is driven mainly by two mechanisms: (1) the interpersonal-based mechanism which relates common bond attachment to VCCBI and subjective wellbeing, and (2) the impersonal-based mechanism which relates common identity attachment to VCCBC and subjective wellbeing. In order to understand the two proposed mechanisms, the research model was tested with data collected from members of a VC

THE CENTRAL ROLE OF ENGAGEMENT AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES

Individuals’ willingness to help the virtual community (VC) and individual members are is known as a key to the survival and success of a virtual community. Prior research on has proposed that engagement plays a central role in online communities. Although researchers implicitly concur on the significance of happiness and satisfaction with online social life in the context of VC, the notion of subjective well-being itself remains relatively little understood in the information systems literature. We propose that subjective well-being is critical to active participation in online social environments. We will construct and test a framework that demonstrates how it powerfully explains members’ helping behaviors in VCs. In particular, our model predicts that subjective well-being will promote willingness to help the VC, while engagement will promote subjective well-being and willingness to help individual members. In addition, three types of social (community) identity (cognitive, evaluative and affective), psychological climate and social support will have direct or indirect effects on engagement and subjective well-being. We will test the proposed research model through the use of data collected from users of a professional virtual community dedicated to sharing knowledge about information technology

Exploring the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Knowledge-based Virtual Communities

This study aims to examine what kinds of behaviors constitute virtual community citizenship behaviors (VCCB) and what factors influence community members\u27 willingness to engage in VCCB. In this paper, I propose a theoretical framework consisting of the main antecedents of VCCB (affective commitment, structural embeddedness and membership tenure) and a multi-dimensional VCCB construct (altruism, civic virtue, consciousness, courtesy and loyalty). Additionally, I develop a measure for assessing VCCB. Data are collected from an online discussion forum (The Grad Cafe) to address the research questions of this study. Results indicate that only affective commitment is found to be significantly predictive of the virtual community citizenship behaviors. Finally, implications and recommendations for practitioners in terms of improving the effective functioning of virtual community through the lens of VCCB are described

Exploring the Antecedents of Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Knowledge-based Virtual Communities

This study aims to examine what kinds of behaviors constitute virtual community citizenship behaviors (VCCB) and what factors influence community members\u27 willingness to engage in VCCB. In this paper, I propose a theoretical framework consisting of the main antecedents of VCCB (affective commitment, structural embeddedness and membership tenure) and a multi-dimensional VCCB construct (altruism, civic virtue, consciousness, courtesy and loyalty). Additionally, I develop a measure for assessing VCCB. Data are collected from an online discussion forum (The Grad Cafe) to address the research questions of this study. Results indicate that only affective commitment is found to be significantly predictive of the virtual community citizenship behaviors. Finally, implications and recommendations for practitioners in terms of improving the effective functioning of virtual community through the lens of VCCB are described

KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES: THE ROLE OF GROUP IDENTITY

The rapid growth of network access and the development of Web 2.0 have resulted in the popularity of virtual communities (VCs), such as Wikipedia, Facebook, professional forums and social network communities. The impact of VCs increasingly spreads over a broad range of fields, from social and educational to business. The content (i.e., knowledge) that VC members provide is the factor that determines the growth and survival of VCs. Previous studies have investigated the factors that influence knowledge-sharing behavior in the VC environment. Despite the fact that these studies have examined the same factors, their findings have been inconsistent. In this paper, we argue that group identity mediates the relationships between knowledge sharing and these factors. This study adopts social identity theory as a theoretical foundation and collects data from a popular virtual community in Taiwan. The results show that group identity indeed mediates the relationships between VC member knowledge sharing and both organizational commitment and organizational support

Sense of Community: A Missing Link to Understand Users’ Performance in Firm-hosted Online Communities

We extended the current research stream about online communities by introducing sense of community as a new construct tounderstand the motivations of online collective and relational actions and highlight users’ loyal promotion to both the onlinecommunity and the host firm. In addition, through the lens of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), membershipperformance was presented as a form of users’ voluntary participation, voluntary cooperation, and firm-hosted loyalty,indicating users’ total contribution to the online community and the host firm. We then examined the relationships betweenmembership performance and its potential drivers. The research model was empirically tested using self-reported data from247 users of four firm-hosted online communities. Overall, we found that sense of community, trust in the host firm, andcommunity loyalty have either full or partial effects on membership performance

The Role of Formal and Social Control in Information Security Behaviors

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of formal and social control on in-role and extra-role security behaviors. Following past studies, we reexamine the effect of formal control on behaviors. Based on social control theory, we further hypothesize the effect of social control on security behaviors. Data collected from 259 members of IS departments confirmed our hypotheses that both formal control and social control generate effects on both in-role and extrarole security behaviors. Implications for academia and practitioners are also provided

Untangling knowledge creation and knowledge integration in enterprise wikis

A central challenge organizations face is how to build, store, and maintain knowledge over time. Enterprise wikis are community-based knowledge systems situated in an organizational context. These systems have the potential to play an important role in managing knowledge within organizations, but the motivating factors that drive individuals to contribute their knowledge to these systems is not very well understood. We theorize that enterprise wiki initiatives require two separate and distinct types of knowledge-sharing behaviors to succeed: knowledge creation (KC) and knowledge integration (KI). We examine a Wiki initiative at a major German bank to untangle the motivating factors behind KC and KI. Our results suggest KC and KI are indeed two distinct behaviors, reconcile inconsistent findings from past studies on the role of motivational factors for knowledge sharing to establish shared electronic knowledge resources in organizations, and identify factors that can be leveraged to tilt behaviors in favor of KC or KI

A Social Relational Model for Firm-Hosted Virtual Communities: The Role of Firm Support

Since the ease of participation and the usefulness of information provided by online groups continue to proliferate in the World Wide Web, people increasingly participate in different forms of virtual community (i.e. online forums, bulletin boards, message boards, chat rooms) for their purposes, such as solving problems, building social relationships, sharing passions, developing professionals. Accordingly, an increasing number of companies are now attempting to exploit this phenomenon by hosting and supporting their own online community for commercial and non-commercial purposes, such as building relationships with their customers, getting their feedback, strengthening the brand, and reducing customer service costs by enabling customer-to-customer problem solving (e.g. Wiertz and Ruyter, 2007). Typical examples of these firm-hosted online communities are Dell Community, Lego® Message Boards, Manhattan GMAT Forums, Ford Forums, iPod (Apple) Discussions, etc. The purpose of this study is to examine factors such as consumers\u27 feelings (sense of community, trust) and the host firm\u27s supports that motivate consumers to exhibit their voluntary contributions and continue their membership in a firm-hosted online community. This dissertation conceptualizes a relational social model in which sense of virtual community and virtual community loyalty are hypothesized to influence customer trust in the host firm and customer citizenship performance (loyalty intention to the host firm, voluntary participation, voluntary cooperation), respectively. Three components of the firm\u27s support to the virtual community—support for member communication, content enhancement and recognition for contribution—are theorized to moderate the relationships between sense of virtual community and trust, and between virtual community loyalty and customer citizenship performance. The overall finding that emerges from the dissertation is that customer citizenship performance is impacted by a customer\u27s sense of virtual community, loyalty to the community, and customer trust in the host firm. Of the three firm support variables, only support for member communication moderates the relationship between virtual community loyalty and voluntary participation. The dissertation makes four theoretical and managerial contributions. First, the paper presents an interdisciplinary review of extant literature on firm-hosted virtual communities and builds on it to develop a conceptualization of relationships between customer-customer social outcomes and customer-business relational outcomes. Second, while previous research has predominantly focused on firm support as an antecedent of trust in customer-business dyadic relationships (Porter, 2004), this research investigates the role of firm support as a moderator of social relational relationships. Third, the study extends the notion of relationship marketing to include customer-customer relationships which has been forgotten in the marketing literature (Clark & Martin, 1994). The implication is that the host firm can use customers themselves to build long-term customer relationships, and based on it to maintain and increase the firm\u27s market share. Finally, from a managerial perspective, this study proposes a general framework that can enable companies to better understand some of the key aspects that define and drive loyalty in online communities. Since sense of community is unique to a specific community, this dissertation also illustrates that a virtual community is an inimitable asset which can be used as a strategic tool to build competitive advantage by a firm in an online environment

Past, present, and future of pro-environmental behavior in tourism and hospitality: a text-mining approach

Scholars have been interested in examining what drives pro-environmental behavior. However, only a few scientific studies have been devoted to analyzing and understanding the pro-environmental behavior of those that are on vacation. Therefore, the current paper contributes to the existing literature by employing a text-mining approach to conduct a full-text analysis of 210 articles and (1) describes pro-environmental conceptualization, (2) presents the important topics and studies that have emerged from the literature, and (3) suggests directions for future research. The eight core topics that were uncovered contributed to discussion of the content of publications, related theories, core constructs, methodologies, main authors, and journals. The paper shows that the literature on pro-environmental behavior uses more quantitative than qualitative approaches and uses structural equations or regression analysis to explore the data. The findings also show that researchers tend to employ well-known theories arising from psychology, sociology, and biology.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio