Explaining members' proactive participation in virtual communities

Understanding members' proactive participation in virtual communities is important to both academics and practitioners. This study extends virtual community research by proposing and testing a model that outlines the antecedents of members' proactive participation behavior and incorporates mediating mechanisms and moderating effects. The findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative data, reveal that social, hedonic, and utilitarian community attributes significantly influence proactive participation through community identification and relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, the conversion of community identification into proactive participation behavior depends on the public recognition of contributions. The authors conclude with some managerial and research implications.

► This study examines both distal and proximal factors of proactive participation.
► Social, hedonic, and utilitarian community characteristics are distal factors.
► Of the three factors, member involvement exerts the greatest impact on participation.
► Relationship satisfaction and community identification are proximal factors.
► Public recognition moderates the link from identification to proactive participation.