Effects of Professional Virtual Community Attributes and Flow Experience on Information Sharing Among Chinese Young Netizens: A Fuzzy-Set QCA.

Abstract

As an important channel to search and share information, professional virtual community (PVC) has become one of the main channels for Chinese young netizens to search information and socialize. However, despite many researches on PVC have been conducted in various fields, there is still a lack of researches on young netizens in China, who are in the stage of online social networking booming with countless PVCs but many of them are non-effective. Moreover, there are few studies to explore explicit paths to obtain the effective information sharing or sustainable development of PVC. Therefore, based on this research gap and social cognitive theory, this study explored PVC information sharing among Chinese young netizens combining the external factors and the individual factors, and attempted to obtain the paths to the effective PVC information sharing. An online survey was conducted through snowball sampling in China, and 407 samples from 15 different PVCs were confirmed. By using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with software fs/QCA 3.0, this study attempted to explore the casual configurations that achieve high and non-high effectiveness of PVC information sharing among Chinese young netizens. Three types of equivalent configurations that can achieve high effectiveness of PVC information sharing are obtained; Four types of equivalent configurations that can achieve non-high effectiveness of PVC information sharing are obtained. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the expertise of PVC and challenge-skill balance of members are the primary factors in PVC information sharing. The findings of this study provide that the paths to high and non-high effectiveness of PVC information sharing, which is beneficial to the management and development of PVC. Furthermore, it is helpful for netizens to find and enjoy the PVCs with high quality when they need them. The management of public opinion and how to design web pages to improve the user experience can also be carried out from this perspective.