Virtual Community Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Construct, Structure And Measurement

Virtual community provides people increased opportunities to interact and form bonds with others. From the company perspective, it can broaden the scope and reach of customer relationships. Hence, scholars have been interested in people’s interactions in virtual community. Virtual community organizational citizenship behavior (VC-OCB) is an emerging concept rooted in Chinese culture, which can help people share knowledge with each other. No multidimensional measures of VC-OCB have been developed for use within a Chinese cultural context. The primary purpose of this research was to determine the construct and structure of VC-OCB from an indigenous perspective.An initial sample (n=217) from university and companies completed the open-ended questionnaire. Their responses were subjected to content analyses and five domains of self-confidence emerged:helping behavior, civic virture, focusing on others, community identity, and complying with rules. In a second sample,197 students (80 males,117 females) completed 35 items generated to reflect these five dimensions. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) resulted in a five factor solution comprising 19 items that explained 63.31% of the variance in VC-OCB and reflected the hypothesized factor structure. In Study 3,444 respondents (198 males,246 females) completed the VC-OCBQ, OCB scale, NEO-FFI, and SOCV scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) replicated the initial factor structure of the VC-OCBQ and indicated a satisfactory goodness-of-fit (x2=214.816, df=106, p<0.001, X2df=2.027, RMR=0.038, GFI=0.952, AGFI=0.914, TLI=0.947, RMSEA=0.048, PCLOSE=0.617>0.05). Internal consistencies for the subscales were 0.674,0.813,0.637,0.833,0.820, supporting the reliability of the VC-OCBQ.In sum, this research resulted in the development of the VC-OCB, a reliable, comprehensive measure of VC-OCB that has promising validity and considerable potential utility in research.