Investigating The Influential Mechanism Of Perceived Benefits On Users' Continuance Intention In Social Q&A Community

With the widely adoption of Web 2.0 technology,the social Q&A community is growing rapidly. As an important channel for satisficing people's information needs, social Q&A community emphasizes users' role in posting and answering questions. User is not only the knowledge consumer, but also the knowledge contributor. Their continuance behavior is of great important for the survival of the social Q&A community. Therefore, understanding the influencing factors and influential mechanism of users' continuance intention will definitely help social Q&A communities to improve their service level.By combining the social exchange theory and the dual model of relationship maintenance,this study proposed a research model to explain the influential mechanism of perceived benefits on users' continuance intention in social Q&A community. Specifically, drawing from the prior literatures, this study argued that online users' continuance intention can be divided as continuance intention to consume and continuance intention to provide; proposed that the perceived benefits of online community users will affect user's continuance intention through some psychological mechanisms; and estimated that the different mechanism of dedication and constrain will affect user's continuance intention.According to the data received from 402 users of social Q&A community,this study empirically tested the proposed model. The results of structural equation modeling(SEM) showed that users' perceived benefits are the antecedents of their continuance intention. Community engagement and community dependence served as the mediating variables in deciding users' continuance intention.