Abstract
A long standing dilemma of online communities is that a small group of community members account for a disproportionate amount of contributions. Prior studies built on intent-based explanations cannot fully explain the phenomenon. This paper introduces the concept of habit formation as a key driver of individual contributions and investigates how habit is formed and how it influences individuals’ participation behavior in online communities. We propose that a threshold of behavioral repetitions exists for individuals to develop a habit. Once the threshold is surpassed, the habit of participation grows stronger and becomes self-reinforcing. We also propose that habit formation weakens the influence of reciprocity, social capital and competition on user participation in virtual communities. Using a panel data of 130,882 postings across 115 discussion boards, we find support for all the hypotheses. Our analysis contributes to the emerging literature on routinized information technology use.
Recommended Citation
Gan, Li; Gu, Bin; Jarvenpaa, Sirkka; and Yang, Geng, "Habit Formation in Online Communities" (2009). ICIS 2009 Proceedings. 189.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2009/189