scholarly journals Sustained Participation in Virtual Communities from a Self-Determination Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6547
Author(s):  
Zhang

Customers’ participation and contribution are vital to the sustainability of virtual communities (VCs) platform while people have many options to freely surf on the Internet. Sustained participation, instead of initial participation, is more meaningful to virtual communities’ sustained development. From the perspective of self-determination theory, this paper explores the effect of community artifacts on sustained participations through users’ satisfaction of psychological need and virtual community identification. With empirical studies in two types of virtual community platforms (interest-based and relational-based), our results reveal several important findings. Firstly, this study finds that virtual co-presence and deep profiling can increase users’ satisfaction of inner psychological needs. But the use of persistent labeling does not affect the user’s satisfaction of psychological needs. In addition, self-presentation is positively related to relational-based community, and rather has no impact on interest-based community. Secondly, this study finds that there exists a positive relationship between users’ satisfied psychological needs and virtual community identification. Finally, virtual community identification significantly impacts sustained participation. This paper offers a new perspective on the psychological mechanism of sustained participation and yields important implications for the managerial practice.

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 526-549
Author(s):  
Isto Huvila

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of unsustainable community platforms from community and information sharing perspectives using Google Lively as an example. The aim is to analyse what happens when a community platform is not sustainable and explore the reasons why Lively failed or succeeded as an arena of participation and information sharing. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on an ethnographically informed analysis of texts on Google Lively mined from the web and gathered using two small qualitative surveys. Findings – The findings show that Lively fostered the emergence of several virtual communities that outlived the platform. Shared experience, experience of crisis and a distinct identity appeared to be significant factors that seemed to contribute to the success of analysed Livelian communities. Research limitations/implications – The study is based on a convenience sample and an analysis of one virtual community platform. Practical implications – The results inform the development of community strategies for situations when a platform is closing and plans are being made for the sustained existence of the virtual community in new contexts. Originality/value – This is the first comprehensive study on Google Lively. The findings can be expected to have relevance also in the context of comparable virtual community platforms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao-Min Chiu ◽  
Chia-Yun Fu ◽  
Wei-Yu Lin ◽  
Chieh-Fan Chen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of how to promote members’ beneficial behaviors toward other members and toward the virtual community (VC). The authors extend Ray et al.’s (2014) framework by developing a more precise definition of community embeddedness, and determining how such embeddedness relates to social support and community engagement. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the proposed research model using data collected from 333 users of online social support communities/groups dedicated to sharing knowledge about pregnancy and child care. Partial least squares is used to analyze the measurement and structural models. Findings The study shows that embeddedness and engagement are significant determinants of willingness to help others and willingness to help the community. Embeddedness has a strong, positive effect on engagement. Social support positively affects community identification and embeddedness. However, community identification does not have a significant effect on engagement. Research limitations/implications Some of the findings, such as the relative importance of embeddedness in fostering willingness to help the community and the relative importance of engagement in fostering willingness to help others, might not be generalizable to VCs where members join for fun and sharing interests. Practical implications Although knowledge contributors could self-derive some drivers of embeddedness and engagement, managers or hosts of VCs should develop strategies and mechanisms to provide or enhance the value they add to knowledge sharing and other beneficial behaviors, even though such added value might be largely intangible. Social implications Social support plays an important role in shaping an individual’s embeddedness within a VC. Managers of VCs should develop strategies to stimulate exchanges of support among members. Originality/value The authors believe that community embeddedness plays a more important role than engagement in shaping the VC’s success and effectiveness. However, the extant VC literature has indicated a relatively weak understanding of the notion of community embeddedness. This study intends to fill that void.


Author(s):  
Shuyan Wang

Blogs have been sprouting like mushrooms after rain in the past few years because of their effectiveness in keeping contact with friends, family, and anybody else who shares interests. Blogs have been used in every field in present society and are becoming the mainstream medium in communication and virtual communities. Politicians and political candidates use blogs to express opinions on political issues. Since the last presidential election, blogs have played a major role in helping candidates conduct outreach and opinion forming. Many famous journalists write their own blogs. Many film stars or personages create their blogs to communicate with their fans or followers. Even soldiers serving in the Iraq war keep blogs to show readers new perspective on the realities of war. Blogs are increasingly being used in education by researchers, teachers, and students. Most high school students or college students belong to one form a virtual community as they share interests and daily news. Scholars have started blogging in order to reflect on their research. More and more teachers are keeping research blogs or creating course blogs. Students are keeping course blogs or personal blogs.


2011 ◽  
pp. 2158-2178
Author(s):  
Jan vom Brocke ◽  
Christian Sonnenberg ◽  
Christoph Lattemann ◽  
Stefan Stieglitz

The usage of social software and virtual community platforms opens up opportunities to bridge the gap between customers and companies and to integrate customers into the value-added process. Ideas generated by members of a virtual community can be utilized to improve and to innovate a company’s value adding activities. However, the implementation and operation of virtual communities may have a considerable impact on financial performance measures of a company. Hence, to measure the profitability of a virtual community appropriately, means of efficiency calculations have to be employed. The objective of this chapter is, therefore, to develop a measurement framework to evaluate the financial performance of a virtual community. The focus is on calculating the total cost of ownership. After introducing a general measurement framework, a particular measurement system is derived from the framework and is subsequently applied to a real life example of the Berlin Stock Exchange.


Author(s):  
Jan vom Brocke ◽  
Christian Sonnenberg ◽  
Christoph Lattemann ◽  
Stefan Stieglitz

The usage of social software and virtual community platforms opens up opportunities to bridge the gap between customers and companies and to integrate customers into the value-added process. Ideas generated by members of a virtual community can be utilized to improve and to innovate a company’s value adding activities. However, the implementation and operation of virtual communities may have a considerable impact on financial performance measures of a company. Hence, to measure the profitability of a virtual community appropriately, means of efficiency calculations have to be employed. The objective of this chapter is, therefore, to develop a measurement framework to evaluate the financial performance of a virtual community. The focus is on calculating the total cost of ownership. After introducing a general measurement framework, a particular measurement system is derived from the framework and is subsequently applied to a real life example of the Berlin Stock Exchange.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110182
Author(s):  
Zainab Kader ◽  
Rik Crutzen ◽  
Nicolette Vanessa Roman

Background: Adolescent hookah pipe use is on the rise despite it being a public health concern. Several studies focus on the external determinants of adolescent hookah pipe use but research focusing on the internal factors motivating adolescents to smoke the hookah pipe is sparse. Objective: Drawing on self-determination theory, a contemporary theory of human motivation, this study aimed to explore the basic psychological needs (BPN) and motivation of adolescent hookah pipe users and nonusers in an attempt to explore whether satisfaction or frustration of needs contributes to hookah pipe use. Method: Thirty adolescents, aged 13 to 19 years, participated in the qualitative study using one-on-one semistructured interviews. Each interview was audio recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed. Results: This study revealed that satisfaction or frustration of BPN, particularly competence and relatedness influences adolescents’ decision to smoke or not smoke the hookah pipe. Hookah pipe users experience more needs frustration compared to hookah pipe nonusers. Furthermore, hookah pipe users are more extrinsically motivated to smoke, whereas hookah pipe nonusers are intrinsically motivated not to smoke. Conclusion: The internal factors associated with adolescent hookah pipe use is a relatively new perspective.


2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Petr Květon ◽  
Martin Jelínek

Abstract. This study tests two competing hypotheses, one based on the general aggression model (GAM), the other on the self-determination theory (SDT). GAM suggests that the crucial factor in video games leading to increased aggressiveness is their violent content; SDT contends that gaming is associated with aggression because of the frustration of basic psychological needs. We used a 2×2 between-subject experimental design with a sample of 128 undergraduates. We assigned each participant randomly to one experimental condition defined by a particular video game, using four mobile video games differing in the degree of violence and in the level of their frustration-invoking gameplay. Aggressiveness was measured using the implicit association test (IAT), administered before and after the playing of a video game. We found no evidence of an association between implicit aggressiveness and violent content or frustrating gameplay.


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