Analysis of the Factors in the Interaction Process of Virtual Community Members and the Intention of Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

In the fourth quarter of 2018 nearly 4 2 billion people used the Internet which means that more than half of the world's population were Internet users Among them the total number of active users in online social media also reached 3 4 billion and the growth is not slowing down However there are more than 5 1 billion people using mobile devices worldwide most of whom use smart phones This will continue to increase the online population in the future and the number of users in the virtual community will continue to rise One person may even have more than one virtual community account In this trend how to make the virtual community knowledge effectively spread and sustainable management of the community is the focus of many community operators The past research has made many contributions to the intention of community knowledge sharing but the interaction between members has attracted less attention from scholars Therefore this study attempts to explore how the participation motivation interaction process knowledge sharing intention and community satisfaction of members in virtual communities interact with each other In this study a virtual community interaction process scale was established and a total of 226 valid samples were collected from the network questionnaires The main results are as follows: 1 The interaction process between virtual community members including communication and social support and involvement of virtual community will be positively affected by trust 2 Knowledge sharing intention and community satisfaction are positively affected by communication and social support but not significantly by virtual community involvement 3 Community satisfaction will be positively affected by the intention of knowledge sharing 4 Virtual community interaction process has no mediating effect on exchange and knowledge sharing intention; Communication and social support have significant mediating effect on trust and knowledge sharing intention

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shu-Hui Chen (Supervisor)