社会资本对虚拟社区用户忠诚的影响

摘要/Abstract

摘要： 虚拟社区用户忠诚对于虚拟社区的长期可持续性发展尤为重要。本研究以知识分享行为（知识共享数量和质量）为中介变量，探讨社会资本（信任、社会联结性、共同愿景）和外部动机（互惠动机、声誉动机）对社区忠诚的作用机理，并通过结构方程模型进行验证。研究结果表明，信任和外部动机通过知识共享数量和质量对社区忠诚有显著正向影响，社会联结性仅通过知识共享数量对社区忠诚有显著影响；信任和外部动机对知识共享数量和质量有显著正向影响，社会联结性仅显著影响知识共享数量，而共同愿景对知识共享数量和质量均无显著影响；知识共享行为对社区忠诚有显著正向影响，并且知识共享质量对社区忠诚的影响更显著。该结论为企业重视虚拟社区用户知识分享行为从而吸引和留住虚拟社区用户提供了决策支持，为企业更好的运营虚拟社区并利用虚拟社区获得可持续发展提供了重要启示。

关键词: 社会资本, 外部动机, 知识共享, 社区忠诚

Abstract: As social media develops, virtual communities are becoming increasingly important platforms for registered users to exchange information. On the one hand, users can share their opinions about particular events, products or services, and on the other hand, they can collect the information they need to make behavioral decisions. With the increasing prominence and expansion of the influence of virtual communities, enterprises come to realize the importance of virtual communities and try to strengthen the operation of their virtual communities or to establish new ones. The users′ loyalty is particularly important to the long-term sustainable development of virtual communities, which in turn depends on the size and activities of the user population in a given virtual community. If users′ turnover rate is high, the virtual community may not survive. Therefore, it is imperative for enterprises to solve how to retain the existing users of their virtual community and how to continue attracting users to community activities and encouraging them to bring more potential users into the community.
With virtual community users as the research objects and knowledge sharing behaviors (quantity and quality of knowledge sharing) as the intermediary variable, this study explores the mechanism of how social capital (trust, social connection, shared visions) and external motivations (reciprocity motivation, reputation motivation) influence users′ loyalty to their virtual communities. The research data was collected through questionnaires．Then structural equation model was applied to empirically verify the theoretical model．The results show that trust and external motivation have significant positive effects on users′ loyalty, which is realized through both the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing, while social connection has a significant positive effect on users′ loyalty only through the quantity of knowledge sharing. Trust and external motivations have significant positive effects on the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing, the social connection has a significant positive effect just on the quantity of that, and shared visions have no significant effect on both, with the possible reasons that the virtual community itself is based on shared purposes and interest, which cannot be totally converted into the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing. It is also found that knowledge sharing behaviors have significant positive effects on users′ loyalty, and that the quality of knowledge sharing has more significant effects on users′ loyalty compared with the quantity of knowledge.
It can be concluded that this study will enrich the theoretical research on knowledge sharing and user′s loyalty to their virtual communities, and provides useful theoretical guidance for relevant application research. In addition, it may alert enterprises and virtual community operators to the importance of users′ knowledge sharing in virtual communities, and offer new methods in the practice of strengthening knowledge sharing and maintaining sustainable sound community relationships. Furthermore, this study may provide enterprises with intellectual support to attract and retain users to their virtual communities. Last, the findings of the paper may bring inspiration to the sustainable development of the enterprises and their virtual communities as well, which will contribute to the overall performance and competitiveness of enterprises.

Key words: social capital, external motivations, knowledge sharing, users′ loyalty to their communities

张洁梅马悦杰. 社会资本对虚拟社区用户忠诚的影响[J]. 科研管理, 2021, 42(3): 139-149.

Zhang Jiemei, Ma Yuejie. The influence of social capital on users′ loyalty to virtual communities[J]. Science Research Management, 2021, 42(3): 139-149.

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