Virtual Community Of Non-trading Members Are Involved In Motivation Research

Virtual community plays a very important role in the internet environment. In the recent years, virtual community gains a speed development owing to the increasing magnitude of internet users. Virtual communities with no transactions play a dominant role in the developing process of Chinese virtual communities. This paper will focus on the virtual communities with no transactions because of sacrifice exiguity of related studies.The magnitude of members is the base of a virtual community. To absorb and motivate people to participate into virtual communities, you should know their related demands and understand why they may participate in. This study will analyze the motivations of members and their relations to between the activities and democracy characteristics of members.The author refers to a lot of related papers in order to understand the main motivations and their relations to the activities of members. Study model is built and relates hypotheses are proposed based on former related studies. Questionnaire is designed to classify the motivations of members and to examine their relations to activities and demography characteristics. 234 effective questionnaires are called back and the analysis result confirms the study model.The motivations that members participate in virtual communities with no transactions can be divided into two categories, individual motivations and group-level motivations. Individual motivation can further divided into extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. In the virtual communities of no transaction, motivations of members are in close relation to activities of members. Intrinsic motivations and group-level motivations are the main factors influencing participation level and participation time. Extrinsic motivations are the main factors influencing participation frequency. Among the demography characteristics, age, education level and login time are in close relation to motivations of members. This study can provide some useful advice for the providers of virtual communities.