Understanding the sustainability of a virtual community: model development and empirical test

With the proliferation of information and communication technologies, there is an expanded opportunity for the public to be involved in knowledge exchange. However, the creation of an online social space (e.g., virtual community) does not guarantee that knowledge exchange will actually take place. The success of a virtual community depends primarily on whether members are willing to continue to use the community, as well as to share and adopt knowledge. If there are a lot of participants who are willing to stay and contribute their knowledge in the virtual community, this will improve the likelihood of connecting to individuals who are able and willing to help. The motivation of this study is to better understand the sustainability of virtual communities, specifically, user continuance behaviors. Given the limited research in the area of information systems continuance, this study seeks to divulge the factors that shape the continuance of a virtual community, and the continuance of knowledge adoption and knowledge sharing behaviors. The first research model (User continuance intention with the virtual community) uses four key theoretical backgrounds and incorporates the key constructs from the literature of the IS continuance model, relationship marketing, social influence, and uses and gratifications to explain user intention to continue using the virtual community. The second research model (User continuance intention of knowledge adoption) extends the information adoption model in the continuance stage and