Analysis on the Influence Path of User Knowledge Withholding in Virtual Academic Community - Based on Structural Equation Method-Artificial Neural Network Model.

Chengyi Le,Wenxin Li

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.764857

Abstract

The phenomenon of knowledge withholding is a vital issue that undermines knowledge sharing and innovation, hinders the development of offline and online organizations. Clarifying the relationship between influencing factors and knowledge withholding is significant to improve the phenomenon of knowledge withholding in offline and online organizations. Few types of research focus on the online virtual academic community and integrate the three factors of knowledge, individual, and environment to research knowledge withholding. To solve the limitation, this research is based on sociology and psychology-related theories. The two dimensions of enabling and inhibition are divided into factors affecting knowledge withholding. An attempt is made to explore the path between the three types of factors influencing knowledge, individual and environment, and knowledge withholding. This study collected data from 616 users in China’s virtual academic community. It used a structural equation model combined with a cross-layer connected neural network to conduct an empirical analysis on the proposed hypothesis. The results found that: in the virtual academic community, knowledge power in the enabling dimension is the main reason for users to form knowledge psychological ownership, which affects users’ knowledge withholding. However, the effect of professional commitment on users’ knowledge psychological ownership is not significant. After SEM-ANN model fitting, the combined inhibitory effect of community privacy protection and community reciprocity on user knowledge withholding in the inhibition dimension is significantly improved. This research has a specific guiding significance for enhancing the knowledge withholding phenomenon of the virtual academic community and creating an excellent academic exchange atmosphere.

Highlights

At the end of the 20th century, the organization for Economic Cooperation and Development first put forward the concept of ‘knowledge economy.’ At present, in the rapid development of information technology, the knowledge economy has played an essential role in social progress and complements information technology
Convergent validity is reflected by AVE, which is used to measure whether the measurement items can fully describe the variables (Fornell and Larcker, 1981)
This study takes the users of the virtual academic community as the research object, and tries to construct the SEMANN knowledge withholding influencing factor model from the new perspective of enabling and inhibiting

Summary

Introduction

At the end of the 20th century, the organization for Economic Cooperation and Development first put forward the concept of ‘knowledge economy.’ At present, in the rapid development of information technology, the knowledge economy has played an essential role in social progress and complements information technology. With the improvement of information technology and internet, the emergence of virtual communities breaks the restrictions of time and space. It opens up a new way for the dissemination of social information and knowledge. The rapidly developing virtual community provides a more convenient channel for scientific research cooperation This virtual community, which relies on the network and gathers all kinds of researchers and scholars, is called virtual academic community. Such communities have realized cross regional, efficient and large-scale scientific research cooperation among users. More and more scientific research users choose to join the virtual academic community to learn about subject development and cutting-edge information through timely knowledge sharing, and achieve collective and personal goals (Hui and Pritchard, 2014; Tan and Li, 2020)

Methods

Results

Conclusion