Research on the User Participation in Relation-based Virtual Communities

Virtual community can be classified into physical-relation-based and virtual-relation-based. From the perspective of IS quality and value perceptions,the paper builds the structural equation model to analyze the participation mechanism distinction between these two types of virtual communities. We find that IS quality and value perceptions have significant effects on user satisfaction which leads to increased social identity and a greater frequency of participation. The indirect effect of IS quality and value perceptions on participation in physical-relation-based virtual are stronger than that in virtual-relation-based.