Abstract

Creative craft communities have existed for years, allowing craftsmen to meet, interact, and share knowledge as they create products with aesthetic and utilitarian value. In recent years, these communities have moved online. In this paper, we study one such online creative craft community, Ravelry, a community focused on knitting and crocheting. Combining prior research on creative crafts, online communities, and reputation building, we examine how influence is established by the designers in a creative crafts community. Specifically, we argue that designers as artist-craftsmen are likely to achieve influence by presenting highly sought-after craft designs for reuse by others in the community. Using panel data on designers collected from Ravelry, we show that artistic influence, as measured by the extent of design reuse, is positively associated with the extent to which the designer demonstrates virtuosity, in terms of design difficulty and creative variety across product categories. Furthermore, we show that community engagement positively moderates the relationship between virtuosity and design reuse. Theoretically, this study contributes to our understanding of how social norms shape community dynamics as creative craft communities move online and how designers as artist-craftsmen take on the role of influencers.

DOI

10.17705/1jais.00982

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