Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China

Social media has captured a major part of people’s daily communication in recent years. As an important component of social media platform, online communities has attracted remarkable popularity and has greatly influenced the normal people’s lives. Both researchers and practitioners have predicted t...

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Main Author:	Yuan, Zhou
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English
Published:	2016
Subjects:	TK5101-6720 Telecommunication
Online Access:	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79089/1/YuanZhouPIBS2016.pdf
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id	my-utm-ep.79089
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spelling	my-utm-ep.790892018-09-27T06:07:31Z Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China 2016-05 Yuan, Zhou TK5101-6720 Telecommunication Social media has captured a major part of people’s daily communication in recent years. As an important component of social media platform, online communities has attracted remarkable popularity and has greatly influenced the normal people’s lives. Both researchers and practitioners have predicted this phenomenon will bring new opportunities and challenges to the business. However, due to the new social media phenomenon, research in this field is yet to mature. In addition, because of online community’s virtual features and low switching cost, members frequently join and leave the communities. Therefore, previous researches have highlighted factors that influence customers’ online community engagement and commitment from different perspective. After reviewing the existing literature related to the antecedents of online community commitment, this study aims to study what are the core factors that may influence online community members’ commitment and how it shapes their behavioural intentions. To facilitate this research objective, this study proposes a holistic model with five hypotheses to explore antecedents of online community commitment from three aspects: personal influences, social influences, and online community characteristics based on Relationship Marketing Theory, Social Influence Model, and Framework of Community Characteristics. In addition, this study tests the effects of online community commitment on members’ behavioural intentions. Lastly, this study stresses on adopting advertising as a moderating factor to investigate the moderating role of advertising on the relationship of online community commitment and behavioural intentions. To initiate this research, an online survey approach was taken. A total of 999 validated questionnaires were collected from ten top maternal and baby care related online communities in China, which were selected based on the ranking from http://top.chinaz.com. Partial least squares based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the collected data. Overall, the results indicated that the proposed holistic model of online community commitment fulfil the principles of a parsimonious model with good predictive ability. The results also show that the collected data fits the proposed model well and support all the proposed hypotheses except H5. Specifically, the results revealed that personal influences, social influences, and online community characteristics gave positive effects on online community commitment. In addition, online community commitment also positively influences the members’ behavioural intentions. However, the impact of online community commitment on behavioural intentions moderated by the level of advertising was not supported. Overall, this study proposed and tested a holistic model of online community commitment which has a theoretical significance and also enhance understanding of consumer behaviour in online communities in China, especially in maternal and baby care related industry. 2016-05 Thesis http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79089/ http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79089/1/YuanZhouPIBS2016.pdf application/pdf en public http://dms.library.utm.my:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:106910 phd doctoral Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, International Business School International Business School
institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
collection	UTM Institutional Repository
language	English
topic	TK5101-6720 Telecommunication
spellingShingle	TK5101-6720 Telecommunication Yuan, Zhou Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
description	Social media has captured a major part of people’s daily communication in recent years. As an important component of social media platform, online communities has attracted remarkable popularity and has greatly influenced the normal people’s lives. Both researchers and practitioners have predicted this phenomenon will bring new opportunities and challenges to the business. However, due to the new social media phenomenon, research in this field is yet to mature. In addition, because of online community’s virtual features and low switching cost, members frequently join and leave the communities. Therefore, previous researches have highlighted factors that influence customers’ online community engagement and commitment from different perspective. After reviewing the existing literature related to the antecedents of online community commitment, this study aims to study what are the core factors that may influence online community members’ commitment and how it shapes their behavioural intentions. To facilitate this research objective, this study proposes a holistic model with five hypotheses to explore antecedents of online community commitment from three aspects: personal influences, social influences, and online community characteristics based on Relationship Marketing Theory, Social Influence Model, and Framework of Community Characteristics. In addition, this study tests the effects of online community commitment on members’ behavioural intentions. Lastly, this study stresses on adopting advertising as a moderating factor to investigate the moderating role of advertising on the relationship of online community commitment and behavioural intentions. To initiate this research, an online survey approach was taken. A total of 999 validated questionnaires were collected from ten top maternal and baby care related online communities in China, which were selected based on the ranking from http://top.chinaz.com. Partial least squares based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the collected data. Overall, the results indicated that the proposed holistic model of online community commitment fulfil the principles of a parsimonious model with good predictive ability. The results also show that the collected data fits the proposed model well and support all the proposed hypotheses except H5. Specifically, the results revealed that personal influences, social influences, and online community characteristics gave positive effects on online community commitment. In addition, online community commitment also positively influences the members’ behavioural intentions. However, the impact of online community commitment on behavioural intentions moderated by the level of advertising was not supported. Overall, this study proposed and tested a holistic model of online community commitment which has a theoretical significance and also enhance understanding of consumer behaviour in online communities in China, especially in maternal and baby care related industry.
format	Thesis
qualification_name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD.)
qualification_level	Doctorate
author	Yuan, Zhou
author_facet	Yuan, Zhou
author_sort	Yuan, Zhou
title	Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
title_short	Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
title_full	Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
title_fullStr	Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
title_full_unstemmed	Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China
title_sort	antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in china
granting_institution	Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, International Business School
granting_department	International Business School
publishDate	2016
url	http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/79089/1/YuanZhouPIBS2016.pdf
_version_	1747818144092651520

Antecedents of online community commitment and its effect on behavioural intentions in China

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