An Empirical Study:Effects Of The Sense Of Virtual Community On The Users’ Loyalty Based On Social Capital Theory

With the rapid development of the Internet industry, it provides users with convenience in enriching people’s daily life, especially the emergence and development of virtual communities. Currently, there are various types of virtual communities, but the successful operation of the virtual community is very small, and the user stickiness is low in most of the virtual communities and a large number of virtual communities will soon decline. Therefore, how to improve the user stickiness and lead users to produce higher loyalty are very important, the issue gets more and more scholars’attention.Virtual communities have obvious advantages in improving the user cohesion and operational performance compare to the portal website and transaction integrator, which we often visited. In particular virtual communities can promote users access again, so that the virtual community can lead surfers converted into users, improving conversion rate. The reason of the virtual communities have this advantage mainly is virtual community it has a high user stickiness. The users participating in a virtual community to discuss topic, participate in activities of interest, and access to information and knowledge to meet their own needs many times. Constantly repeated communication and interaction lead users have a certain perception and evaluation, and ultimately form a sense of belonging, and have faith in it as a group, thus forming a sense of virtual community (SOVC).The sense of virtual community once formed, it will facilitate the users’access frequency, thereby increasing the loyalty of the community. According to the present study we can see that the sense of virtual community research is still at a relatively new perspective, especially a sense of virtual community and how the four dimensions impact on loyalty. Therefore, mining impact mechanism and a sense of virtual community analysis of the key elements to enhance customer loyalty helps improve the sense of virtual community research system and user loyalty, and lay the theoretical foundation for the study of user behavior in virtual communities. What’s more, it also provides inspiration on management and marketing for a lot of virtual communities in a difficult situation. This study has important theoretical and practical significance.The paper based on the theory of social capital, from the structure of the capital, cognitive capital and relational capital of the three-dimensional analysis the key factors that influence the sense of virtual community, and on this basis to establish a sense of community and user loyalty relationship model from a new perspective to explore the impact of social capital theory, to probe which factors in the virtual sense of community impact on the user’loyalty. Understanding the impact of social capital on the user virtual sense of community, and then discusses the influence of a sense of virtual community on the user’s loyalty.In this paper, according to the literature and the result of the existing researches, and combined with the characteristics of a virtual community, we investigated300users of virtual communities using a sample survey in the research. The survey used in two ways:online and offline. Using SPSS and AMOS statistical analysis tools to analyze data, including reliability and validity analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, T test, structural equation model, in order to verify the hypothesis proposed in this paper, and based on the findings, the theoretical model has been amended. Through the empirical study, the paper proposes the suggestion that how to operate and sustain community developmentThrough empirical research and data analysis, we get the following conclusions:1.The degree of participation of the users has a positive impact on sense of virtual community, and has a significant impact on the four dimensions of the virtual sense of community.2.The cognitive capital has a positive effect on the virtual sense of community. Among them, common vision and common language have significant effect on the sense of member, influence, integration and meet of needs, While the effect on the common emotional connection is not obvious.3.Relational capital has a significant positive impact on the sense of virtual community. In the relational capital, the trust has a significant positive impact on the four dimensions of the sense of virtual community; however, the impact of reciprocity on the member sense and emotional connection is not significant; the influence of identity on the sense of member is not obvious.4.The impact of the sense of virtual community on the loyalty is very significant. Among them, the sense of member, integration and meet of needs, and emotional connection is obvious. While the influence has a weaker influence on loyalty.