Link Virtual Community Interaction and Citizenship Behavior of Fitness Club Customers: The Role of Psychological Empowerment and Sense of Community
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Through social exchange theory, this study explores the relationship of virtual social interaction on customer citizenship behavior. By using a sample of 363 fitness enthusiasts from China, this study found that the three dimensions of virtual community interaction have a positive impact on customer citizenship behavior. Moreover, this study found that psychological empowerment partially mediated the relationship between the three dimensions of virtual community interaction and customer citizenship behavior. Secondly, this study also found that the effect of virtual community interaction on psychological empowerment was conditional on a sense of community. The results of this study suggested that managers should pay attention to the important role of user interaction in a virtual community and guide users to form high-quality interactions. Furthermore, managers should also pay attention to the importance of customer citizenship behavior to make users as employees participate in the interaction in a virtual community to enrich the integrity of the interaction. Lastly, managers need to pay attention to users’ sense of belonging and identity regarding the virtual community and encourage users to obtain incentives through the combination of online and offline activities to create the most benefits for the virtual community of fitness clubs.Keywords:
Virtual community
Sense of Community
Online Community
Sense of virtual community (feelings of identity, belonging, and attachment) is an essential component of virtual communities. In this chapter, we develop a model of how sense of virtual community develops in professional virtual communities. Based on sense of virtual community models in social virtual communities, we expect that the exchange of support, development of a group identity, and group norms will lead to a stronger professional sense of virtual community. Unlike social virtual communities, we also predict that employee/members occupational identification will increase professional sense of virtual community, particularly when the virtual community can provide support and information not available in the employee/member’s face-to-face life. Finally, we propose that increased occupational commitment, professional networks, and employee performance are outcomes of sense of virtual community in professional virtual communities.
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The sense of virtual community is a critical issue in virtual community research. For this reason, understanding it deeply is important for studies of communities-of-practice, virtual collaboration, virtual organization, and other critical organizational or information systems issues.
The purpose of our study is to examine how member’s sense of virtual community makes virtual group support in virtual community and what factors contribute to members’ sense of virtual community from social capital factors (social interaction ties, trust, and shared language) and group traits(group innovativeness and need for affiliation). This study demonstrates that the members of Facebook experienced their own virtual community as a community, similarly to the way people experience effective face-to-face communities.
The research model was examined with data from members in the Facebook which is the most popular virtual community in Taiwan. Facebook is a well-known virtual community in Taiwan which everybody has connected and shared with their members. Samples finally consist of 135 groups who are in employment, a total of 675 questionnaires collected.
Structural Equation model was conducted to examine the relationship between social capital, group traits, sense of virtual community, and social support online. The result indicates that most of social capital factors and group traits can directly build sense of virtual community which can result in giving support in virtual community. The implications for practice and future research directions are discussed.
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Sense of virtual community (feelings of identity, belonging, and attachment) is an essential component of virtual communities. In this chapter, we develop a model of how sense of virtual community develops in professional virtual communities. Based on sense of virtual community models in social virtual communities, we expect that the exchange of support, development of a group identity, and group norms will lead to a stronger professional sense of virtual community. Unlike social virtual communities, we also predict that employee/members occupational identification will increase professional sense of virtual community, particularly when the virtual community can provide support and information not available in the employee/member’s face-to-face life. Finally, we propose that increased occupational commitment, professional networks, and employee performance are outcomes of sense of virtual community in professional virtual communities.
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In this article, we introduce the “sense of virtual community” construct and explore the factors that are expected to affect it. We also examine the moderating effect of the virtual community origin. By analyzing 172 responses, we found that the sense of virtual community is affected by the virtual community characteristics such as (1) leaders’ enthusiasm, (2) perceived similarity, (3) off-line activities, and (4) playfulness. From the moderated regression analysis, we also found that the virtual community origin moderates the relationship between virtual community characteristics and sense of virtual community.
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E-commerce strategists advise companies to create virtual communities for their customers, but what is involved in establishing and maintaining virtual communities? This paper addresses two questions: does a sense of community similar to that sometimes observed in physical communities also occur in virtual settings, and how is a sense of virtual community maintained? These questions are examined in an intensive study of an established virtual community called MSN (Microsoft Network). MSN members experienced a sense of community, but the dimensions of the sense of community differed somewhat from those reported for physical communities in ways plausibly related to the differences between electronic and face-to-face communication. The experienced sense of community in MSN was actively maintained through the social processes of exchanging support, creating identities and making identifications, and the production of trust. Again, these processes are similar to those in non-virtual communities, but related to the challenges of electronic communication. The findings suggest a process model of sense of virtual community creation and maintenance that is simpler and more powerful than previous theories.
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Sense of virtual community (feelings of identity, belonging, and attachment) is an essential component of virtual communities. In this chapter, we develop a model of how sense of virtual community develops in professional virtual communities. Based on sense of virtual community models in social virtual communities, we expect that the exchange of support, development of a group identity, and group norms will lead to a stronger professional sense of virtual community. Unlike social virtual communities, we also predict that employee/members occupational identification will increase professional sense of virtual community, particularly when the virtual community can provide support and information not available in the employee/member’s face-to-face life. Finally, we propose that increased occupational commitment, professional networks, and employee performance are outcomes of sense of virtual community in professional virtual communities.Request access from your librarian to read this chapter's full text.
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Abstract Psychological sense of community (PSOC) was studied within two types of virtual community and one type of community of place. Fifty-six members of these community groups completed the Sense of Community Index (SCI). An analysis of variance found partial support for the initial hypotheses with the intentional-community-of-place group scoring significantly higher on the SCI than the location-oriented virtual community. The results were discussed in the context of 3 PSOC correlates of depth of disclosure, reciprocity and shared interests/experience. It was concluded that virtual communities may contribute to overall PSOC.
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In this article, we define and describe the concept of online communities, outline the essential conditions under which they emerge and present some means that foster the building of online communities. “Online community” is one of the buzzwords in the age of Web 2.0. Within this article, we refer to online community as a voluntary group of users who partake actively in a certain computer-mediated service. The term “online community” is preferred over the term “virtual community,” as it denotes the character of the community more accurately: community members are interacting online as opposed to face-to-face. Furthermore, the term “virtual community” seems too unspecific, because it includes other communities that only exist virtually, whereas, an online community in our definition is always a real community in the sense that community members know that they are a part of their community. Nevertheless, there are other reasonable definitions of online community. An early and most influencing characterization (which unfortunately utilizes the term “virtual community”) was coined by Howard Rheingold (1994). He wrote: “…virtual communities are cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace. A virtual community is a group of people […] who exchanges words and ideas through the mediation of computer bulletin boards and networks” (p. 57). A more elaborate and technical definition of online community is given by Jenny Preece (2000), which acts as a benchmark for developers since then. She states that an online community consists of four basic constituents (Preece, 2000, p. 3): • Socially interacting people striving to satisfy their own needs; • A shared purpose like an interest or need that provides a reason to cooperate; • Policies in the form of tacit assumptions, rituals, or rules that guide the community members’ behavior; and • A technical system that works as a carrier that mediates social interaction. Not explicitly mentioned in this characterization, but nevertheless crucial for our aforementioned definition (and not in opposition to Preece’s position), is voluntary engagement (see also Janneck, Finck, & Oberquelle, 2005). As Preece’s (2000) definition indicates, the basic constituents of online communities include individual issues, group-related issues, as well as technology-related issues. Online communities thus comprise the participants’ basic individual motivation, the social interaction processes entailed to “bundle” individual needs to increase efficiency, and the implemented technical functions that support these processes. In the light of the aforementioned role of social processes, it is not surprising that, with respect to online communities, findings from voluntary groups of active user communities outside computer-based systems are also a highly relevant source of information (see e.g., Baumeister & Bushman, 2008). In the section devoted to online community building, we will present Kraut’s (2003) suggestion of a highly-sophisticated application of social psychology theory to address some well-known problems in online communities.
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This study examines how an experienced sense of virtual community affects relationship-marketing-related outcomes. Based on social identity and relationship marketing theories, a research model is developed and structural equation modelling is used to test the relationships between a sense of virtual community, brand-loyalty intentions, brand-community intentions, and word-of-mouth intentions on a sample of 342 active members of a Finnish business-newspaper brand community. The findings suggest that a sense of virtual community strengthens brand-community, brand-loyalty and brand-related word-of-mouth intentions. Hence, the results imply that a sense of virtual community reflects positively on the brand hosting the online community and results in positive business-related outcomes.
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Sense of virtual community (feelings of identity, belonging, and attachment) is an essential component of virtual communities. In this chapter, we develop a model of how sense of virtual community develops in professional virtual communities. Based on sense of virtual community models in social virtual communities, we expect that the exchange of support, development of a group identity, and group norms will lead to a stronger professional sense of virtual community. Unlike social virtual communities, we also predict that employee/members occupational identification will increase professional sense of virtual community, particularly when the virtual community can provide support and information not available in the employee/member’s face-to-face life. Finally, we propose that increased occupational commitment, professional networks, and employee performance are outcomes of sense of virtual community in professional virtual communities.
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