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The model of pay-for-knowledge incentivizes individuals with financial rewards for sharing their expertise, facilitating a transactional exchange between knowledge providers (sellers) and seekers (buyers). While this model is effective in promoting paid contributions, its influence on free knowledge exchanges remains ambiguous, creating uncertainty about its overall impact on platform knowledge ecosystems. This study aims to explore the mechanim of how knowledge payment influences free knowledge contribution. Based on relational signaling theory, this study posits that a buyer’s payment for knowledge acts as a positive relational signal in the buyer–seller relationship and examines how the signaling effect varies across different social contexts through attribution theory.

This paper empirically tests the hypotheses by analyzing a data set comprising 630 instances from 359 unique knowledge sellers on Zhihu, a prominent knowledge-sharing platform in China. This paper use zero-inflated negative binomial models to conduct this analysis.

The findings reveal that when buyers pay for knowledge, this action positively influences sellers to contribute knowledge for free. However, the strength of this influence is moderated by the platform’s social functions: appreciation feedback tends to weaken this effect, while social network ties enhance it.

Prior research has predominantly focused on the financial incentives of pay-for-knowledge and its spillover effects on unpaid users’ activities. This study shifts the focus to the social dimensions of pay-for-knowledge, arguing that buyer-initiated knowledge payments signal buyers’ commitment to foster reciprocal relationships with sellers. It expands the literature on the relationship between knowledge payment and contribution, moving beyond financial incentives to include social factors, thus enriching our understanding of the interplay between paid and free knowledge activities. Additionally, the empirical evidence supports the efficacy of pay-for-knowledge in promoting both free and paid contributions within knowledge-sharing platforms.

The online health community's success depends on doctors' active participation, so it is essential to understand the factors that affect doctors' knowledge contribution behavior in the online health communities. From the perspective of peer effect, this paper discusses the influence of focal doctors' peers on focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior and the mechanism behind it. This paper aims to solve these problems.

Empirical data of 1,938 doctors were collected from a Chinese online health community, and propensity score matching and ordinary least squares were employed to verify the proposed theoretical model.

The results show that the presence of focal doctors' peers in online health communities has a positive effect on the knowledge contribution behavior of focal doctors, and the economic returns and social returns of focal doctors' peers have a significant mediating effect.

This paper discusses focal doctors' knowledge contribution behavior from the perspective of peer effect. It enhances the understanding of focal doctors' behavior in the online health communities by exploring the mediating role of their peers' economic and social returns. The results of this paper extend the research in the field of peer effect and online health and provide management implications and suggestions for online health platforms and doctors.

The research aims to explore the influence mechanism of peer feedback and users' knowledge contribution behavior. This study draws on the social identity theory and considers social identity as a mediating factor into the research framework.

This paper collected users' activity data of 142,191 ideas submitted by 76,647 users from the MIUI community between October 2010 and May 2018 via Python software, and data were processed using Stata 16.0.

The results indicate that knowledge feedback and social feedback positively influence users' knowledge contribution (quantity and quality), respectively. User's cognitive identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution behavior, affective identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution behavior, while evaluative identity positively mediates the relationship between peer feedback and knowledge contribution quality, but there is no mediating effect between peer feedback and knowledge contribution quantity.

This study advances knowledge management by highlighting peer feedback on online innovation communities. By demonstrating the significant mediating effect of social identity, this study empirically clarifies the relationships of peer feedback (knowledge feedback and social feedback) to specific dimensions of knowledge contribution, thereby providing managerial guidance to the online innovation community on incentivizing and managing user interaction to foster the innovation development of firms.

Continuous knowledge contribution behaviors (CKCB) are critical for the healthy development of online medical communities (OMCs). However, it is unclear that if and how contributors' prior actions and the responses they received from the community influence the nature of their future contributions. Drawing upon the Information Systems Continuance theory and Service Feedback theory, the purpose of the study is to examine the impact of knowledge contribution performance (KCP) on doctors' CKCB. Evaluation of social motivation, financial incentive and the moderating influence of expertise level (EL) provided further insight into the pathways that motivate various forms of CKCB.

In order to better understand the CKCB of physicians in OMCs, the authors divided it into two categories: A_CKCB (active CKCB) and P_CKCB (passive CKCB). Information Systems Continuance theory and Service Feedback theory are adapted and integrated with empirical findings from previous research on OMCs to develop a model of CKCB. This study used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test hypotheses in the preexisting research model based on data collected from a Chinese OMC platform.

The results show that KCP helps develop several facets of CKCB. According to the findings, doctors' CKCB improved dramatically after receiving feedback from A_CKCB and P_CKCB, but feedback from peers did not promote CKCB. This study found that financial rewards only have a significant positive effect on P_CKCB, and that the level of expertise has a negative effect on the effect. The findings also demonstrated that doctors' level of expertise moderates the relationship between fA_CKCB (a comprehensive evaluation of doctors' A_CKCB) and A_CKCB.

Future studies should look at the role of self-efficacy as a mediator and attitudes as a moderator in the link between KCP and various forms of CKCB. This will help authors figure out how important KCP is for physicians' CKCB. And future research should use more than one way to gather data to prove the above roles.

This study makes a significant contribution to understanding the association between CKCB and KCP by highlighting the significance of distinguishing between the various forms of CKCB and their underlying causes.

This research has advanced both the theory and practice of OMCs' user management by illuminating the central role of KCP in this context.

Based on the social interaction theory and trust theory, this study investigates the switching of users on social question and answer (Q&A) platforms from knowledge seekers to knowledge contributors.

We used Python to gather data from Zhihu, performed hypothesis testing on the models using Poisson regression and finally conducted a mediation effect analysis.

The findings reveal that knowledge seeking impacts users' motivation for information interaction, emotional interaction and trust. Notably, information interaction and trust exhibit a chained mediation effect that subsequently influences knowledge contribution.

Current studies on user knowledge behavior typically examine individual actions, rarely connecting knowledge seeking and knowledge contribution. However, the balance of knowledge inflow and outflow is crucial for social Q&A platforms. To cover this gap, this paper empirically investigates the switching between knowledge seeking and knowledge contribution based on the social interaction theory and trust theory.

To a large extent, knowledge in government workplaces resides within the hierarchy as it provides unique services to the public. Governments should preserve and pass on valuable and irreplaceable knowledge in providing their services through learning by sharing. Yet, sharing requires time and effort. This study examines the motivations of civil servants to share knowledge and their knowledge-sharing behaviors.

The authors conducted an online survey to collect quantitative data from civil servants in the Hong Kong Government and obtained 104 useable responses to test the eight hypotheses comprising six constructs by structural equation modeling to explore the participants' knowledge-sharing behaviors.

Results indicated that (1) expected contribution was the primary source of motivation behind knowledge sharing; (2) participants engaged more frequently in informal than formal knowledge-sharing activities; and (3) there was a dire need for knowledge sharing focusing on explicit knowledge of work procedures.

The research focuses on motivational factors for knowledge sharing. Despite abundant literature about knowledge sharing in public or governmental organizations, scant studies focus on the motivations behind why expected rewards and expected associations have less significant impacts on the attitude toward knowledge sharing than expected contribution.

Customers' co-design behavior is an important source of knowledge for product innovation. Firms can regulate the focus of information interaction with customers to set goals and motivate their co-design behavior. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and construal level theory, the authors build a research model to study whether the fit between the regulatory focus of firms' task invitations (promotion focus vs prevention focus) and their feedback focus (self-focused vs other-focused) can enhance co-design behavior by improving customers' experiences (perceived meaning, active discovery and perceived empowerment).

The authors conducted two online between-subjects experiments to validate the proposed research model.

The two online experiments reveal that customers' experiences are enhanced when the feedback focus is congruent with the regulatory focus of the firm's task invitations. Specifically, self-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the prevention focus context. Other-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the promotion focus context. Moreover, customers' experience significantly and positively affects co-design behavior (i.e. co-design effort and knowledge contribution).

This work provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to improve the effectiveness of information interaction with their customers and eventually ensure the sustainability of co-design.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an accessible and interdisciplinary research strategy in organisational ethnography, called action ethnography, that acknowledges key concepts from action research and engaged and immersive ethnography. It aims to encourage methodological innovation and an impact turn in ethnographic practice.

A working definition of “action ethnography” is provided first. Then, to illustrate how an action ethnography can be designed by considering impact from the outset, the author draws on a study she is undertaking with a grassroots human rights monitoring group, based in England, and then discusses advantages and limitations to the approach.

The author suggests three main tenets to action ethnography that embrace synergies between action research and ethnography: researcher immersion, intervention leading to change and knowledge contributions that are useful to both practitioners and researchers.

This paper provides researchers who align with aspects of both action research and ethnography with an accessible research strategy to employ, and a better understanding of the interplay between the two approaches when justifying their research designs. It also offers an example of designing an action ethnography in practice.

Whereas “traditional” ethnography has emphasised a contribution to theoretical knowledge, less attention has been on a contribution to practice and to those who ethnographers engage with in the field. Action ethnography challenges researchers to consider the impact of their research from the outset during the research design, rather upon reflection after a study is completed.

This study aims to explore how firms can enhance their innovation processes by effectively utilizing external knowledge and employing digital technologies. Specifically, it emphasizes the role of absorptive capacity (ACAP) in external knowledge acquisition and assimilation (potential ACAP), as well as transformation and exploitation (realized ACAP), highlighting the necessity of equipping firms with digital technologies to support ACAP activities.

To achieve the research purpose, we conducted a structured literature review of academic papers sourced from Scopus-Elsevier.

The key findings encompass the identification of common digital technologies supporting ACAP and explore how these technologies contribute to knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. The main results show that social media and online communities are the most studied technologies in relation to ACAP activities. Research predominantly centres on potential ACAP – with acquisition activity more studied than assimilation – rather than realized ACAP – with only social media and online communities demonstrating full support for transformation and exploitation activities.

This research represents a pioneering joint study of ACAP and digital technologies, advancing understanding beyond organizational perspectives and expanding open innovation literature by integrating ACAP role in technology collaborations. A call for qualitative investigations into the relationship between digital technologies and ACAP emerged.

The findings offer valuable guidance to innovation managers, aiding them in selecting appropriate digital technologies to strengthen ACAP activities.

This work’s uniqueness lies in bridging the gaps between open innovation, ACAP and digital technologies, which are often studied in isolation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the state of the literature on knowledge sharing in open source software (OSS) development communities by examining the existing research and identifying the knowledge gaps and opportunities that can inform areas for future research.

A systematic literature review was conducted of literature published between January 2011 and February 2023. A total of 24 papers were identified and reviewed.

The findings reveal that the literature on knowledge sharing in OSS development communities from developing countries are limited. Additionally, there exists a limited focus on the development of frameworks to support knowledge sharing in OSS communities. The transient nature of OSS development contributors’ results in knowledge loss; thus, knowledge retention needs further investigation.

This study only included papers whose titles, keywords or abstracts included the search keywords “knowledge sharing” and “Open Source Software”. While the keywords were carefully applied, when applying the search, it cannot be ruled that some relevant studies might have been missed. The study was also limited to conferences and journal papers published in English. Despite the limitations, the study provides a systematic review of knowledge sharing in OSS communities and presents findings that can be useful to researchers and practitioners interested in this area.

The study provides a systematic literature review of published papers and identifies themes and future research areas on knowledge sharing in OSS communities. Additionally, this review offers insights into future research avenues for theory, content and context on knowledge sharing in OSS development communities.