On The Role Of Normative Influences In Commercial Virtual Communities

The potential to reconcile economic benefits to the firm with the social needs of customers has made commercial virtual communities a popular tool for companies to support their core products/service with a value-added service option. An important key to the success of such a virtual community is the behavior of its members. In this paper, we develop a framework of pro-social behavior (i.e., community citizenship behavior and contribution intentions) for understanding and explaining the motivation of virtual community members to actively participate in and care for the community. We show that the main determinants of pro-social behavior are the social norm of reciprocity and the personal norm of obligation. Reciprocity, in turn, is impacted by the value of the information and the socio-emotional support exchanged by the virtual community members.