Research On The Governance Mechanisms And Their Impact On Customers' Value Co-Creation Behavior In Firm-Hosted Online Brand Communities

With the development of digitalization technologies,firms are increasingly keen on building online brand communities(OBCs)to connect with customers,get feedback from customers,and involve customers in new product design and update to achieve value co-creation behavior.Although firms can benefit from customers' participation in value co-creation behavior in firm-hosted online brand communities(FHOBCs),the voluntary and anonymous OBC members enable an environment without agreed-upon behavioral norms and lack of real-time supervision.Therefore,the negative brand experiences may travel further and faster,and the open and direct communication among customers in the community can bring unpredictable negative word-of-mouth and social conflicts.Moreover,OBCs are possibly plagued with harmful content such as hate speech,malicious intent and cyberbullying.If left ungoverned,some customers' discord behavior may impact the public impression of OBCs,and the community will not gain new customers,let alone engage customers in value co-creation behavior.Hence,which governance mechanisms can be adopted to manage,supervise,and control FHOBCs to encourage customers' value co-creation behavior is a severe problem that needs to be resolved.Throughout the existing literature,the problem of how to governance organizations in a virtual environment has raised the attention of scholars around the world.However,most of the literature lies on the conceptualization at a macro level.Although a few scholars have investigated governance mechanisms in the context of online brand communities,their research only investigated the concept from the perspectives of control and cooperation,which leading to a limited understanding of the structure of governance mechanisms in OBCs.Moreover,the research neither takes the member type nor the specific characteristics of the community and environment into account,which may lead to different members' reactions.In this situation,this study aims at contextualizing the concept and structure of governance mechanisms in the context of FHOBCs,developing and validating an instrument of measurement,and then investigate whether and how governance mechanisms will impact customers value co-creation behavior in FHOBCs.All these will broaden the research of customers value co-creation in FHOBCs.This research investigated the concept and structure of governance mechanisms in FHOBCs and their impact on customers value co-creation behavior both conceptually and empirically.Firstly,based on relevant literature review and theoretical analysis,governance mechanisms in the context of FHOBCs is defined.Then,collect data through several methods such as semi-structured interviews,literature analysis,on-site observation,and then use grounded-theory coding steps to extract the structural dimensions of governance mechanisms in FHOBCs.After rigorous scale development procedures,the instrument of measurements of governance mechanisms in FHOBCs is obtained.Second,based on the Stimulus-Body-Response framework and combined with psychological ownership theory,transaction component theory,social exchange theory,and social identity theory,this study establishes a conceptual model to explore how governance mechanisms impact customers' value co-creation behavior in FHOBCs with the mediating role of collective psychological ownership.Third,after a survey design and a pre-test on collective psychological ownership and customers' value co-creation behavior,an online survey is conducted in several popular FHOBCs in China.And then,the reliability and validity are checked,and the hypothesis is tested.Fourth,based on the results of the hypothesis test,the fsQCA method is introduced to identify the key configurations that promote or inhibit customers‘ value co-creation behavior and gain further insights into the relationships among accountability mechanism,relational norms,community incentives,network routines,collective psychological ownership and customers‘ value co-creation behavior in FHOBCs.Finally,the research conclusions are drawn,and both the theoretical and managerial implications are given.The main conclusions are as follows: first,the governance mechanism in FHOBCs is a multi-dimensional concept,which can be divided into accountability mechanism,relationship norms,community incentives and network routines.And the scales developed based on the structural model of governance mechanism in FHOBCs we obtained are validated.Second,the four dimensions of governance mechanisms can directly affect customers' value co-creation behavior to different extents.Among them,the accountability mechanism does not have a significant direct effect on customers' value co-creation behavior while it has a significant indirect effect on customers' value co-creation behavior;Relational norms and network routines have both direct effect and indirect effects on customers' value co-creation behavior;Community incentives only has a direct effect on customers' value co-creation behavior.Third,collective psychological ownership has a positive effect on customers' value co-creation behavior and it can play various mediating roles between governance mechanism and customers' value co-creation in FHOBCs.Specifically,it plays a full mediating effect on the relationship between accountability mechanism and customers' value co-creation;it plays a partial mediating effect on the relationship between relational norms and customers' value co-creation behavior as well as the relationship between network routine and customers' value co-creation;however,it does not exert any mediating effect on the relationship between community incentives and customers' value co-creation behavior.Fourth,governance mechanisms and collective psychological ownership have multiple paths of influence on customers' value co-creation behavior.Five conditions(conditions combinations)that lead to customers' in value co-creation behavior have been identified and one conditions combination that leads to non-customers' value co-creation behavior has been identified as well.This research provides several innovative points to the existing literature.First,it makes clear the concept and dimensional structure of governance mechanisms in FHOBCs.In this way,this study enriches and supplements the relevant theories of governance mechanisms in the context of FHOBCs,makes up for the deficiencies of related theoretical research,and achieves good interaction and docking with existing governance mechanism research literature.This study also develops and validates an instrument of measurement for governance mechanisms in FHOBCs,which can be used in subsequent empirical research.It not only expands the research of governance mechanisms in FHOBCs from the theoretical analysis level to the practical operation level but also provides a basic measurement tool for subsequent empirical research.Second,this study enriches the existing literature of value co-creation behavior in OBCs by introducing governance mechanisms from the perspective of the role of firms in value co-creation behavior,which not only enhances the understanding of customers' value co-creation behavior but also provides new perspectives and directions for related research on customers value co-creation behavior in FHOBCs.Third,starting from psychological ownership theory,this paper constructs a conceptual model of the influence mechanism of governance mechanism on customers' value co-creation behavior in FHOBCs,which opens up the black box of complex psychology explaining the impact of governance mechanism on customers' value co-creation.More than that,it enriches the theoretical research on customer psychological ownership and expands the application context of collective psychological ownership.Fourth,with the help of the fsQCA method,the multiple influential paths of governance mechanism and collective psychological ownership in causing customers' value co-creation behavior have been identified.In this way,it reveals the linearity,heterogeneity and dynamics interactions of governance mechanisms and collective psychological ownership and their impact on customers' value co-creation behavior,which deepens the understanding of the influential mechanism of governance mechanism on customers' value co-creation behavior.