To give or to receive? Factors influencing members’ knowledge sharing and community promotion in professional virtual communities

Professional virtual communities (PVCs) bring together geographically dispersed, like-minded people to form a network for knowledge exchange. To promote knowledge sharing, it is important to know why individuals choose to give or to receive knowledge with other community members. We identified factors that were considered influential in increasing community knowledge transfer and examined their impact in PVCs. Data collected from 323 members of two communities were used in our structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggested that norm of reciprocity, interpersonal trust, knowledge sharing self-efficacy, and perceived relative advantage were significant in affecting knowledge sharing behaviors in PVCs. The knowledge contributing and collecting behaviors were positively related to knowledge utilization. Furthermore, while the collecting behavior had a significant effect on community promotion, the influence of contributing behavior on community promotion was limited.