Abstract
The motivation of online community users’ contribution behavior has captured the attention of many scholars in various disciplines. But little empirical research has studied user behaviors according to the different stages of an online community. Based on Iriberri et al. (2009)’s life cycle model of online community, our study specifically focuses on the users’ contribution behavior at the creation stage of an online community. Some constructs of previous studies like trust and online-identity are not able to explain users’ behavior in our context, because identity and trust relationship are not established until growth and mature stage. Given the uniqueness of early participants and online community lifecycle, our study integrates three theoretical perspectives (need fulfillment theory, task-technology fit model and self-verification theory) to propose a research model to understand the participation motives. Furthermore, we introduced a moderator of group-level uniqueness to the self- verification theory.
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Hongying; Cai, Xiaofang; and Wagner, Christian, "Exploring Users Motivations to Knowledge Contribution at the Creation Stage of Online Communities" (2018). PACIS 2018 Proceedings. 274.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2018/274