Understanding sustained participation in transactional virtual communities

This study aims to address two research gaps in prior studies on knowledge sharing in virtual communities (VCs). First, prior studies have focused on knowledge sharing VCs with no explicit reward system, but VCs sharing knowledge based on a competition-based reward system (e.g., transactional VCs) have not been explored. Second, prior related studies have concentrated on the determinants of initial participation in sharing knowledge rather than sustained participation despite there being important distinctions between these two stages of participation behavior. In this study, we focus on understanding sustained participation in knowledge sharing in transactional VCs by drawing on expectancy-value theory and a social learning process. Considering that a social learning process is involved in maintaining sustained participation, we propose that task complexity and self-efficacy - two social learning factors - moderate the relationship between motivation and sustained participation. A field survey with 205 subjects in a transactional virtual community was conducted to test the research model. According to the findings, extrinsic and intrinsic motivations significantly influence sustained participation intention. A negative interaction effect between extrinsic motivation and task complexity, as well as positive interaction effect between intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, was also observed. A non-linear interaction effect between intrinsic motivation and task complexity was also found. Study implications and future research directions are also discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.