사회적 자본과 개인 동기가 정보공유와 커뮤니티 촉진에 미치는 영향: 중국의 가상커뮤니티를 중심으로

Purpose: Virtual communities change the way people communicate and share information. The purpose of this paper is to find how internet social capital and individual motivations influence the information sharing in virtual communities. This study considers the social capital theory, individual motivations, information sharing, and community promotion to construct a theoretical model. Design/methodology/approach: Social capital focuses on three dimensions that include 6 factors: social interaction ties, centrality, shared language, shared vision, trust and reciprocity. Individual motivations include 2 factors: reputation and enjoy helping. To confirm the research model and the hypotheses, 426 effective questionnaires were used for the final analysis. Findings: The result of data analysis demonstrates that social interaction ties, centrality, shared language, trust, and reciprocity were significant in affecting information sharing behaviors. However, reputation, enjoy helping, and shared vision does not appear to have a significant influence on information sharing behaviors. The information sharing was positively related to community promotion.