A Study On The Peer Effect Of Knowledge Sharing Among Users Of Online Communities

The birth of online communities has changed the way users acquire knowledge.Online communities are groups of users linked by the same information needs or interests,and nowadays,they have become an important way for people to share and acquire knowledge on a daily basis.However,as knowledge is a public good,the sharing of knowledge by users in online communities can lead to the problem of freeriding,and users are less willing to share their knowledge.Traditional material incentives may weaken users’ intrinsic motivation to share knowledge due to their inherent limitations.Therefore,from the perspective of online community managers,how to design an appropriate incentive mechanism to increase the intrinsic motivation of online community users to share knowledge and thus promote the level of knowledge sharing has become a highly relevant research issue.To overcome the dilemma of insufficient knowledge sharing in online communities,this paper focuses on the mechanism of peer behaviour on knowledge sharing in online communities and conducts an empirical test,with the aim of improving the level of knowledge sharing in online communities.First,based on previous research and community practice,this paper fully explores the essence of knowledge sharing behaviour of online community users in terms of the definition of online community,knowledge characteristics and the current situation of knowledge sharing,proposes that the current knowledge sharing behaviour of online community users faces the dilemma of insufficient intrinsic motivation of users to share,and summarises the material incentive mechanism of knowledge sharing.By summarizing the material incentive mechanisms for knowledge sharing,the three major problems of the traditional material incentive mechanisms,namely high incentive costs,weakening users’ intrinsic motivation and failure to improve users’ stickiness,are summarized.And then,to solve the dilemma of insufficient users’ intrinsic motivation to share knowledge,this paper investigates the important influence of peer behaviour on users’ knowledge sharing in online communities based on social support theory,and analyses the moderating effect of relationship strength and peer reputation on this process.Finally,the findings from the Snowball data suggest that peer behaviour positively influences knowledge sharing among online community users,i.e.there is a peer effect on knowledge sharing in online communities,while relationship strength negatively moderates the peer effect on knowledge sharing and peer reputation positively moderates the peer effect on knowledge sharing.Based on the above,this paper explores the mechanism of peer motivation of knowledge sharing behaviour in online communities from the perspective of social support theory,analyses the peer influence factors of knowledge sharing behaviour of online community users,provides theoretical basis for optimising the incentive mechanism of knowledge sharing in online communities,and proposes three management suggestions accordingly: establishing reciprocal medals,focusing on operating high reputation users and promoting The study also proposes three management suggestions: establishing reciprocal medals,focusing on operating highreputation users and promoting connections among users with heterogeneous knowledge.