A Study On The Influence Of Social Support On Value Co-creation In Virtual Game Community

With the popularization of digital technology,the gaming industry is rapidly developing and becoming an essential part of social life,especially for young people.Constructing virtual gaming communities and encouraging co-creation of community values can help people establish new social relationships and enhance social cohesion,making it an inevitable choice for the gaming industry to expand its market and demonstrate its innovative potential.However,current research on value co-creation in virtual gaming communities is insufficient,lacking effective guidance and support for their construction.To address this issue,this paper reviews relevant literature,summarizing domestic and foreign scholars’ theories on virtual communities,social support theory,social influence theory,and value co-creation behavior.In the study review,online game players are not simply regarded as consumers of gaming products,but as value co-creators in virtual gaming communities,extending the research subject from customers to more specific player groups.Combining the social characteristics of role-playing in MMORPG games,this paper constructs a multi-theoretical integrated research model.The model is mainly used to explore the influence paths of players’ value co-creation behaviors,including player participation behavior and player citizenship behavior,in virtual gaming communities.Social support,represented by information support and emotional support,mediates the effect of social influence that manifests as subjective norms,community identification,and group norms.This paper conducts a quantitative analysis of structural equation models based on questionnaire surveys,using 491 valid questionnaires to test reliability and validity,common method bias,structural equation modeling,and mediation effects,ultimately verifying the multiple group relationship hypotheses among variables.Additionally,content-based community analysis and qualitative analysis based on 24 in-depth interviews are conducted.The main conclusions are as follows: In virtual gaming communities,emotional support has a significant positive impact on subjective norms,group norms,and community identification;information support from strong relationships significantly affects subjective norms and has some impact on community identification and group norms;information support from weak relationships significantly influences community identification and group norms but does not affect subjective norms.For player participation behavior,group norms have the strongest effect,followed by community identification;conversely,in player citizenship behavior,community identification has the strongest effect,followed by group norms;subjective norms cannot significantly affect player participation behavior but can partially affect player citizenship behavior.The research results of this paper provide insights into how to increase players’ value co-creation behavior,such as: developers and operators should focus on diverse value co-creation behaviors and provide a suitable environment for them;players can strengthen social support among themselves,forming good group norms to ensure the sustainability of value co-creation.Finally,based on the shortcomings in the research,improvements for future studies are suggested.