An Empirical Study Of The Antecedents And Consequences Of The Member's Commitment In Virtual Communities

The advancement of scientific technology provides the huge place for sharing information. As a special way of network communication, the virtual community makes the knowledge spread fast and diversity than before. So, the research of virtual community has become one of the hottest topics in management.The tremendous growth of virtual communities has inevitably led to the creation of similar communities offering competing bundles of resources. The research in the similar phenomenon about the traditional employment relationships in organization found that the organization commitment has great effect. Does the individual commitment in virtual communities have the same effect? This line of research, however, is scarce in existing literature. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively investigate the antecedents and consequences to individual commitment in virtual communities.The purpose of this study is to analyze and testify several key factors as antecedents and consequences on individual commitment in virtual communities. On the reference of the research method of organization commitment, this paper adopts the three subcomponents of commitment presented by Canada scholars Meyer and Allen, and then builds the model to reflect the relationships between each commitment and variables identified as its antecedent or consequences. Data collected from a field survey of 628 individuals is used to empirically test the 13 hypotheses in the research model by structural equation modeling techniques. The hypotheses testing results indicate that self-efficacy and investments are key factors that significantly and directly influence affective commitment and continuance commitment respectively. Three commitments affect members'three behaviors respectively and significantly. This study provides both theoretical implications and practical guidelines for managers to enhance virtual communities'build.