The Influence of Social Presence on Continual Participation in Online Communities: The Relational View Based on Social Identity Theory

Virtual communities constitute an online environment that offers a new form of communication whereby community members share information and interact with each other through participation in the community. Social presence, the degree to which a person is perceived as real in a mediated communication, is a key factor that may foster higher proficiency in computer-mediated communication environments such as virtual communities. Drawing on the relational view of social presence, this research incorporates social identity theory to investigate the influence of infusing social presence into virtual communities and its consequences on virtual community members´ continual participation. To identify the causal relationship between social presence and continual participation of virtual community members, this research also considers sense of virtual community (SOVC) as the mediator between social relationship factors and virtual community participation. Two plausible research models are to be compared and the associated research methodology and expected contributions of this research-in-progress are also discussed.