Explaining Virtual Community User Knowledge Sharing Based on Social Cognitive Theory

User active knowledge contribution is crucial for virtual community development. Social cognitive theory (SCT) argues that individual behavior is influenced by both environment and personal cognition. Based on SCT, this paper analyzed the effect of trust as an environmental factor and self-efficacy, community-related outcome expectation and personal outcome expectation as personal cognitive factors on user knowledge sharing. We collected 250 valid papers and analyzed the data with LISREL. The results show that trust strongly affects self-efficacy, which in turn affects community-related outcome expectation and personal outcome expectation. Trust, self-efficacy and personal outcome expectation significantly affect knowledge sharing. We did not find the significant effect of community-related outcome expectation on knowledge sharing.