“What’s Coming Next?” Epistemic Curiosity and Lurking Behavior in Online Communities

Abstract

Lurkers are members of online communities but their presence is hardly (if at all) perceived by others. As prior work has shown, lurkers often dominate online communities and represent up to 90 percent of membership. Yet lurking in online communities remains an unexplored phenomenon in contemporary IS theory and research. In this paper, we briefly review existing theory and research on lurking behavior in online communities, and identify open issues regarding the nature of lurking and what motivates this type of behavior. Based on an analysis of the psychology of curiosity, we develop a theoretical process-based framework linking state and trait curiosity to lurking and de-lurking behavior in online communities. In general, we contend that the psychology of curiosity holds promise for IS-based research on online communities.