Abstract
A long standing dilemma of online communities is that a small group of community members account for a disproportionate amount of contributions. Prior studies built on intent-based explanations cannot fully explain the phenomenon. This paper introduces the concept of habit formation as a key driver of individual contributions and investigates how habit is formed and how it influences individuals' participation behavior in online communities. We propose that a threshold of behavioral repetitions exists for individuals to develop a habit. Once the threshold is surpassed, the habit of participation grows stronger and becomes self-reinforcing. We also propose that habit formation weakens the influence of reciprocity, social capital and competition on user participation in virtual communities. Using a panel data of 130,882 postings across 115 discussion boards, we find support for all the hypotheses. Our analysis contributes to the emerging literature on routinized information technology use.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | ICIS 2009 Proceedings - Thirtieth International Conference on Information Systems |
State | Published - 2009 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 30th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2009 - Phoenix, AZ, United States Duration: Dec 15 2009 → Dec 18 2009 |
Other
Other | 30th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2009 |
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Country/Territory | United States |
City | Phoenix, AZ |
Period | 12/15/09 → 12/18/09 |
Keywords
- Habit formation
- Human behavior
- Longitudinal study
- Virtual community
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Information Systems