8/2/2019 2011 Ecime - Motivations in Virtual Communities - Poster

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Motivations in Virtual Communities: a Literature ReviewGiovanni Camponovo, University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland

Social / Fun Competence Resource

Fun

gaming, UGC

Relations

social network

Expertise

practice nets

Learning

open source

Commerce

e-markets

Resources

P2P, wireless

PURE

member-initiated

HYBRID

organization-sponsored

5th European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation, 8-9 September 2011, Como, Italy

Further research: the paper proposes aframework for studying motivation in virtualcommunities based on a list of motivations issuedand a taxonomy of community types. It may beused to better understand motivations and theirrelation with the different community contexts.

Research question: what motivates users to join andparticipate in virtual communities ? Motivations are general orcontext sensitive ?

Methodology: literature review of studies of user motivation invarious types of virtual communities.

Motivation theories and factors: the main motivation factorproposed by the most popular motivation theories1 are:

Internal (psychological) factors:

• Enjoyment (SDT, PBT)

• Competence (SCT, SDT, PBT)

• Values (SDT, PBT)

Social factors:

• Relations (SDT, PBT)

• Social capital (TRA TPB UTAUT IDT SDT)

• Reciprocity (TRA, TPB, UTAUT, IDT, SDT)

Utilitarian factors:

• Utility (EVT, TAM, UTAUT, SCT, IDT, SDT)

• Effort (EVT, TAM, UTAUT, IDT)

• Facilitating conditions (UTAUT, IDT)

 A taxonomy of virtual communities: communities can beclassified using two criteria who can influence motivations:purpose and organization structure.

1. Motivation theories considered : Expectancy Valence Theory (EVT), Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of 

Planned Behavior (TPB), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), Social cognitive theory (SCT), Prosocial behavior theory(PBT), Self Determination Theory (SDT), Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT)

Social: communities of practice

Motivations in communities of practice arecomposite: social factors are key in bothpublic and enterprise-based communities;internal (altruistic values) and utilitarian(get useful info) are important in publiccommunities, whereas competence (look competent) is key in enterprise contexts.

Competence: open source

Open source participants are motivated byinternal factors, especially competence (improve skills, challenges) and idealisticvalues  (open source concept). Otherfactors, of utilitarian (software satisfiesown needs, developer is paid) and social(peer recognition) nature also play a role.

Resource: wireless communities

Wireless community members are mainlydriven by utilitarian factors (use of thecommunity network). Internal factors likevalues (altruism, promote free access) andcompetence are also important, speciallyin pure communities. Social factors areoften cited but are typically less salient.

1. Introduction

2. Framework 

3. Results

4. Conclusions

Relevance: virtual communities are characterized by a groupof people that actively participate and interact through anelectronic medium, have shared interests and common socialnorms. They are one of the major and fastest developing trendsin the ICT landscape. Their key challenge is the ability to attracta critical mass of contributing users and make them contribute.

Conclusions: Motivations in virtual communities are composite and include amix of psychological, social and utilitarian factors. Such factors arecommon for all types of community, but their importance varies based oncommunity purpose (social motivation in social-oriented, internal incompetence-oriented, utilitarian in resource-oriented communities) andstructure (social and internal factors in pure, utilitarian in hybrid communities)