Virtual community, purchasing behaviour, and emotional well-being

• Quality use of virtual community affects consumer emotional well-being.
• Experience features of communities influence members' informational reciprocating.
• Information reciprocating predicts users' emotional well-being.
• Highly collectivistic users make purchase based on communities' reviews.

The benefits of virtual communities in increasing firms' profits, instilling knowledge in consumers, and enhancing consumers' social experience and enjoyment are widely recognised. However, relatively little is known about how the use of a virtual community could influence consumers' emotional well-being. This study examines the relationships among virtual community features (structural and experiential routes) as antecedents of virtual community engagement, including quality of use of virtual communities (time spent online and level of information exchange), electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) purchasing behaviour, and consumers' emotional experience. Furthermore, by extending the cultural perspective to virtual community engagement, this study examines the role of collectivistic values on the aforementioned relationships. The proposed hypotheses are tested on the basis of data collected from 286 members of different virtual communities in Taiwan. The results partially support the theory that features of virtual communities influenced the quality of use, which then has a subsequent effect on consumer eWOM purchasing and emotional well-being. The results of the empirical analysis add credence to the proposed relationships. The role of collectivistic values is also partially supported. A detailed discussion of the findings and limitations of this study is provided.

Chinese abstract虚拟社区在提升企业利润、向消费者逐渐灌输知识以及增强消费者社会体验和享受方面的益处 得到了广泛认可。然而，对虚拟社区的使用如何能影响消费者的情绪健康，这相对来说却鲜有人知。本研究把虚拟社区各种特征之间的各种关系（结构及经验路线）作为虚拟社区参与的先行项进行考察，包括虚拟社区的使用质量（在网上花费的时间和信息交换程度）、网络口碑（eWOM） 购买行为以及消费者情绪体验。此外，通过把文化视角延伸到虚拟社区参与，本研究考察集体主义价值观对前述各种关系的作用。所提出的各种假设都是根据从台湾不同虚拟社区的286位成员收集而来的数据进行检验。结果部分支持了虚拟社区的特征影响使用质量并随后对消费者网络口碑购买行为与情绪健康产生影响的理论。经验主义的分析结果使所提出的各种关系更具可信度。集体主义价值观的作用亦得到部分支持。就本研究的调查结果和限制，有详细的探讨。