Exploring Factors That Influence Knowledge Sharing In Online Knowledge Communities: Based On Social Capital Theory

In the environment of knowledge economy, knowledge is the most valuable capital and one way to enhance competition is by knowledge sharing. The development of Internet provides us a few convenient ways to sharing knowledge, such as the knowledge sharing platform - online knowledge communities, which are low cost, easy to use and can fulfill various needs. It is necessary to confirm factors influence knowledge sharing before prompting the sharing behavior in online knowledge communities. Traditionally papers based on social capital argued that social capital influence the creation and sharing of knowledge in organizations. The online knowledge communities can be seen as a collective of whole that consistent of mutual engagement and interaction between individuals like traditional communities, there exits social capital too. So in this paper, we apply theories of social capital to examine how the factors embedded in individual motivation and social capital influence knowledge sharing in online knowledge communities.First, we introduce the concept and characteristic of social capital, knowledge sharing and online knowledge communities, review and summarize the conclusions of previous papers; Second, we apply theories of social capital by adding two factors"collectivism"and"attitude toward guanxi"on the basis of previous models to develop a concept model for examining how individual motivations and social capital foster knowledge sharing in online knowledge communities, describe the variables and propose hypotheses. Third, we test this model empirically through the software SPSS11.5 and AMOS 17.0, questionnaire designed by myself on the basis of previous investigation, data collected from Internet and investigation. The empirical research result shows that reputation and enjoy helping have positive effect on knowledge contribution and knowledge collection, centrality has a negative effect on knowledge collection, Control variable experience shows some effect on knowledge collection. Other factors, including"collectivism"and"attitude toward guanxi"as the context factors in China, show no positive influence neither on knowledge contribution nor knowledge collection in online knowledge communities. Finally, we discuss the limitation of this study and the future study direction, and give some advice according to the conclusions.