Building Social Capital in Online Communities: a Perspective of Information and System Quality

An Online Community (OC) is an IT-based social space where people are connected and access various resources during virtual social interaction. Previous IS research reveals that social capital can be a salient determinant of user participation and contribution to OCs. However, most such research assumes that social capital is given and has been built; limited attention has been paid on how social capital is developed within an OC. To bridge the gap, grounded on the Social Capital Theory (SCT) and IS quality literature, we argue that information quality and system quality influence social capital building in an OC from a multi-dimensional perspective in terms of cognitive, relational and structural capital. The potential results of this study will shed light on the design and management of OCs.