Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Motivations in Virtual Communities: A Literature Review
Giovanni Camponovo
University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland
Giovanni.Camponovo@supsi.ch
Abstract: One of the major recent trends in the IT landscape is the fast emergence of community-based models
centered on the active participation of users as contributors. This trend is so strong that many observers consider
it as a step in the evolution of systems, for instance by referring to it as Web 2.0. Community-based models
permeated various types of services like social networks, user generated content communities, interest or
practice communities, peer-to-peer networks, open source software communities, wireless communities and so
on. However, using a community-based model is not a guarantee of success, as the primary key success factor
is the ability to attract a critical mass of contributing users. Therefore, a key research issue is to understand what
motivates users to actively participate in such virtual communities typically characterized by a loose group of
individuals that primarily interact via some computer-mediated communication media. This paper proposes a
review of existing studies of user motivation in various types of virtual communities with the goal of highlighting a
few general motivations that are recurring across the various community types as well as suggesting that
motivations are context sensitive by pointing out that the importance of the various types of motivation is
somewhat different across the different types of communities. The results of this paper are a taxonomy of
communities in four broad types according to their primary orientation (social relationships, contents, interests
and resources), a taxonomy of motivations (intrinsic, psychological, social and economical) and a mapping
between the various community types and motivations.
Keywords: virtual communities, motivations, literature review
1. Introduction
The rapid emergence of community-based applications and business models centered on the active
participation of users as contributors is probably the most influential trends occurring in the ICT
landscape. This trend is so strong that many observers consider it as a step in the evolution of
information systems. For instance, many now commonly refer to community-based web systems like
social networks, blogs and user-generated content sites as “Web 2.0”, implicitly suggesting that they
are more evoluted than the old “Web 1.0” sites. This view is well described by Musser and O’Reilly
(2006): “Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis
for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user
participation, openness, and network effects”.
The characteristics or user participation, openness and network effects are the basis of a more
general family of community-based business models which includes various types of services such as
communities of interest or practice (e.g. thematic forums and news), social networks (e.g. Facebook),
user generated content communities (e.g. Youtube, Flickr), peer-to-peer networks (e.g. BitTorrent),
open source software communities (e.g. SourceForge), wireless communities (e.g. FON) and so on.
Although there are many successful examples of business using a community-based model, the
major difficulty and primary key success factor is the ability of the community to attract a critical mass
of contributing users. It is widely acknowledged that the development and sustainability of a
community heavily depends on the involvement of many motivated members willing to make
contributions or share their resources with it. The value of a community does indeed strongly depends
on network externalities (as the number of members increases, the network becomes more valuable
which then attracts even more users and so forth) and thus building critical mass is a key imperative
for growth and sustainability.
Therefore, a key research issue is to understand what motivates users to actively participate in such
virtual communities typically characterized by a loose group of individuals that primarily interact via
some computer-mediated communication media. This research question has been tackled by many
researchers in different contexts and with different theoretical models. Because this heterogeneity
makes it difficult to get a comprehensive broad overview of research in this topic, it is useful to
aggregate and summarize the various contributions in a literature review. This paper therefore
proposes a review of existing studies of user motivation in various types of virtual communities with
the goal of highlighting a few general motivations that are recurring across the various community
types as well as suggesting that motivations are context sensitive by pointing out that the importance
of the various types of motivation is somewhat different across the different types of communities.
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