Understanding Knowledge Sharing Willingness in Virtual Academic Community: A Survey Study on College Students

Abstract

Virtual Academic Community, as a type of Learning Community, features on the exchange of academic-related ideas, experience, documents, comments and feedbacks. Although there is a growing interest in Learning Community and Virtual Communities of Practice, few studies have examined the influencing factors of knowledge sharing in Virtual Academic Community from an integrated viewpoint including personal and cultural perspectives. This paper conducts a survey study on the influencing factors of college students’ knowledge sharing willingness in Virtual Academic Community. The results indicate that self-efficacy, personal outcome expectation, guanxi and gaining face have positive effects on knowledge sharing willingness. Additionally, self-efficacy has a positive effect on community-related outcome expectation. Finally, research limitations are drawn and discussed.