Purpose
Online communities (OCs) are the popular social environments in which people interact by sharing resources such as information, advice and thoughts on their mutual interests. Existing research lacks an explanation of the reasons of participation behavior in OCs and how such participation behavior provides members with perceived benefits. This study aims to observe how social exchange theory constructs (perceived members’ support and exchange ideology) affect online community participation behavior (OCPB), and moderated by exchange ideology (EI) and perceived ties, which in turn brings perceived benefits to its participants.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey method was followed to collect data, and structural equation modeling is used with 305 valid samples.
Findings
The results highlight the significant effects of perceived members’ support on OCPB. Participation behavior in OCs has critical effect on perceived benefits. The results also identify the moderating effects of EI and perceived tie, where perceived tie was insignificant.
Originality/value
The findings from this study bridge the literature gaps in the context of OCPB by demonstrating how practitioners and OC managers can enhance perceived members’ support, which result in OCPB, and thus provide the OC users with several perceived benefits.
This chapter proposes the narrative network analysis methodology for application in the examination of online communities. The narrative network analysis provides a basis for systematic examination of online communities that has been missing from the literature. The chapter describes three online communities and their characteristics to demonstrate the possibilities of the methodology. From these descriptions a proposed model of the communities is presented, and then an abbreviated narrative network analysis is developed. The network analysis demonstrates how an ethnographically informed model may be tested in a systematic manner with the narrative network analysis techniques. The chapter then concludes with a number of questions for future research in this area that have been proposed by other authors. These unanswered questions are likely candidates for future research using this promising methodology.
This chapter focuses on the growing role of consumer-brand communities in the online context and in particular brand communities in online strategy games. It explores the loyalty of community members toward the other members, as expressed by their willingness to recommend the online community externally. Using data collected from 384 gamers, this chapter suggests that the strength of the relationship with the game brand and the need to socialise are good predictors of brand community participation, as expressed by the brand community engagement and the brand community identification. Brand community participation ultimately leads to the brand community recommendation intention.
Understanding online community participation behavior and perceived benefits: a social exchange theory perspective