Users' continued participation behavior in social Q&A communities: A motivation perspective.

Abstract Social Q&A communities are becoming increasingly popular, but literature on users' continued participation is still relatively limited. Based on theory of planned behavior, this paper aims to answer two research questions: (1) what are the factors that motivate users to continuously participate in online social Q&A communities? (2) How do the factors differ across lurkers, askers and answerers? An online survey was performed on a Chinese social Q&A community. And motivational factors are selected from three perspectives: psychological, social and functional. Results indicate that commitment, shared language and shared vision have positive influence on both lurkers' and answerers' attitude towards continued participation. Concerning the functional dimension, hypotheses about influence of network externalities on users' perceived usefulness are partially supported. And about the psychological dimension, motivations differ greatly between lurkers and answerers. Highlights • Motivational factors affecting users' continued participation in social Q&A communities are studied. • Commitment, shared language and shared vision positively affect lurkers' and answerers' continued participation attitude. • Hypotheses about impacts of network externalities on users' perceived usefulness are partially supported. • Enjoyment in helping others is found to positively affect answerers' continued participation attitude, but not lurkers. • Knowledge demand is found to be a significant predictor of lurkers' continued participation attitude, but not answerers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]