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The importance of virtual brand communities is growing day by day as a result of consumers increasingly using online tools to contact fellow consumers in order to get information on which to base their decisions. For this reason, this work aims to explore some of the effects of participation in a virtual brand community on consumer behaviour.

The paper proposes the positive effects of participation in a virtual community on both consumer trust and loyalty to the product, brand or organisation around which the community is developed. In addition, it also proposes a positive effect of trust on consumer loyalty. After the validations of measurement scales, the hypotheses are contrasted through structural modelling.

The data, obtained through a web survey using members of several free software virtual communities, show that participation in the activities carried out in a virtual community may foster consumer trust and loyalty to the mutual interest of the community (the free software in this case). In addition, the study also found a positive and significant effect of consumer trust on loyalty.

Data were collected thanks to a web survey using Spanish‐speaking subjects.

The high costs every company has to face in order to get new customers make it increasingly necessary to reinforce the ties established with customers. In this respect, this study has shown that managers may foster consumer trust and loyalty by developing virtual brand communities and promoting consumers' participation in them.

Most of the works that are focused on virtual communities have been conducted at the conceptual level. Thus, with the aim of moving on this topic, this study analyses empirically the effects of participation in a virtual brand community on consumer behaviour.

This paper aims to explore some of the effects of belonging to a virtual brand community on consumer behaviour. It also proposes the concept of belonging as a three‐dimensional construct.

The paper proposes that belonging to a virtual community has positive effects on consumer satisfaction, affective commitment and word‐of‐mouth behaviour. After validation of the measurement scales the hypotheses are contrasted through modelling.

The data show that belonging to a virtual community may enhance consumer satisfaction, affective commitment and word‐of‐mouth advertising towards the brand around which the community is developed. In addition, the paper introduces a third dimension to the construct of belonging, called non‐participative belonging. Active participative belonging influences the level of satisfaction and affective commitment more positively than passive and non‐participative belonging.

Data were obtained through surveys, web surveys and online interviews. There were also limitations of sample size and sampling procedure.

Managers may enhance consumer satisfaction, affective commitment and word‐of‐mouth advertising by developing virtual brand communities and promoting consumers' participation in them.

Previous works that have focused on virtual brand communities have never concentrated on virtual brand communities within Facebook. In addition, prior to this study, belonging to a virtual brand community was a two‐dimensional construct: active and passive participative belonging. The paper identifies a third dimension as non‐participative belonging. Thus this paper offers new areas for future research.

Exploring the antecedents of members community participation is extremely important for virtual communities (VCs) research and practice. As an important social characteristic of individuals, social embeddedness has been proved as an important antecedent of many individual behaviors; however, few research has investigated the influence of virtual community members social embeddedness on virtual community members’ participation. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social embeddedness and community participation in VCs.

This paper conducted empirical study to test the hypotheses. Based on existing scales, this research designed the questionnaire and used a web-based survey to collect the data from VCs in China. To avoid the common method bias, this study collected data at two different times. The final sample included 96 virtual community members from seven communities (community size ranging from 10 to 25) of Baidu Tieba, which is the largest Chinese online communication platform. And this paper used regression models to analysis the data.

Based on social network theory, this paper found that virtual community members’ social embeddedness in their virtual community has a curvilinear (i.e. inverted U-shaped) effect on their community participation behaviors. And members’ perceived autonomy mediates the curvilinear (i.e. reversed U-shaped) relationship between social network embeddedness and community participation. Furthermore, member instability moderates the curvilinear (i.e. inverted U-shaped) main effect, such that the curvilinear relationship is weakened when member instability is high.

Departing from previous virtual community studies that examine antecedences of participation in linear logic, this study applied social network theory to create a complex, curvilinear, moderated mediation model. The result reveals a curvilinear (i.e. inverted U-shaped) relationship between virtual community members’ social embeddedness in the virtual community and their community participation. And this study also introduce autonomy as mediator and member instability as moderator. By testing the whole model between community members’ social embeddedness and community participation, this study contributes to deepen the understanding of social embeddedness and virtual community participation.

To examine the effects of consumers' lurking and posting behaviors in virtual consumer communities on specific brand loyalty.

An online survey of a virtual community of Apple computer users was conducted to test a model of involvement, participation, loyalty, trust, and attitudes toward the brand exist in messages within the community.

The causes and effects of lurking and posting differed. Lurking contributed to brand loyalty more than posting did, and the primary purpose of lurking was to look for information regarding product function/performance, instead of satisfying consumers' affective needs.

As a result of the limitations in a computer mediated communication environment, virtual consumer communities should be perceived as an arena for weak‐tied strangers to communicate for word‐of‐mouth (WOM) behavior, rather than as a brand community.

Although negative messages in a community can hurt brand image, companies should encourage the establishment of communities about their products and encourage consumers to participate in them.

Although the importance of virtual communities has been recognized, few studies have been done to examine the business value of consumer communities. Based on perspectives of brand community and WOM behavior, this paper contributes to virtual community and marketing research by clarifying the effects of consumers' lurking and posting behaviors in a consumer community on brand loyalty.

The research goal of this study was to determine how flow experience and perceived behavioral control (PBC) affect participation behavior in the backpackers' forum.

Subjects were self‐selected by placing messages on over five recommendations members in the backpackers' forum. In total, 2,000 invitation messages were mailed to members of the Taiwanese backpackers' forum, of which 435 were returned completed (a return rate of 21.75 percent).

As our analysis, flow experience in a virtual community is positively associated with the behavioral intentions to use the virtual community. Perceived enjoyment in a virtual community is positively associated with the behavioral intentions to use the virtual community, and behavioral intentions to visit a virtual community are positively associated with the member's actual participation in a virtual community.

While this study has produced meaningful data for the development of multidimensional measures of factors that influence participation behavior in the Taiwanese backpackers' forum, the validity of an instrument cannot be firmly established on the basis of a single study. All of the data used for tests were collected only from a single backpackers' forum.

Our study shows that travel agencies must become technologically astute to keep up with its customers, should be viewing the internet as a vital distribution channel for marketing, and should be linked to other well‐known reservation web sites.

The backpacker community served as a reference group that could significantly influence travelers' beliefs, attitudes, and choices.

In the present study we found that a basic understanding of the essence of the backpacker community is a prerequisite for any organization operating a travel‐oriented community if they are to be clear about their mission, purpose, and the right direction to take to achieve their goal. That goal will increase the commitment of the members to a virtual community by increasing their helping behavior and active participation.

This paper aims to examine the motivation for consumer participation in value cocreation and its impact on value cocreation behavior within cultural and creative virtual brand communities.

Through an in-depth analysis of the psychological needs of the users of short videos, the motivations for user participation in value cocreation are categorized based on the self-determination theory, and six theoretical models are proposed for the impacts of participation motivation on the different levels of value cocreation behavior. Our research hypotheses are validated by conducting a regression analysis based on the 277 valid responses collected.

Ranked from highest to lowest by the degree of impact, the motivational factors that have significant positive impacts on browsing behavior are altruistic motivation, information motivation, social motivation, and hedonic motivation. The motivational factors that have significant positive impacts on member interaction behavior are achievement motivation, hedonic motivation, social motivation, and brand identity, while the motivational factors that have significant positive impacts on content creation behavior are achievement motivation, altruistic motivation, information motivation, and social motivation.

This current paper enriches the research on the consumer’s value cocreation behavior in virtual brand communities and provides constructive relevant platform manager’s suggestions for increasing user participation.

Prior research indicates that the success of a virtual community relies on its ability to allow community members to share knowledge interactively. Wiki applications are web‐based hypertext applications that facilitate collaborative authoring, and have been widely adopted by virtual communities to facilitate knowledge sharing and accumulation. Nevertheless very few studies have empirically investigated the dynamics of how these applications contribute to the development and continuity of virtual communities by enhancing the knowledge sharing intentions of community members. This paper aims to address these issues.

A theoretical model was developed to explain and predict the knowledge sharing intentions of virtual community members. Survey data collected from 232 wiki community members were examined using structural equation modelling to verify the theoretical model.

The research results confirm the positive influence of the use of wiki applications on knowledge sharing intention through the mediating effects of member interactions, community participation, and community promotion. However it was found that community trust and community identification had no significant effect on knowledge sharing intention.

Very few studies have empirically investigated the relationships among the characteristics of wiki applications, virtual community outcomes (participation, promotion, trust, and identification), and the knowledge sharing intentions of virtual community members. The research findings can enrich our understanding of how wiki or other similar technologies affect the sharing of knowledge within virtual communities. This can, in turn, provide both virtual community administrators and managers of organisations with guidelines for creating successful knowledge sharing practices.

The Internet has evolved, prompted in part by new Web 2.0 technologies, to become a more widespread platform for interaction, communication, and activism. Virtual communities, or groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise, synthesise this Internet evolution and the Web 2.0 technology. Users increasingly want to engage online with one another and with organisations of all kinds. These novel Internet‐based technologies dominate the new business models of the digital economy giving companies radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries. One of the most illustrative examples of this new trend is the Open Source Software (OSS) projects development. This paper aims to analyse the structure and topology of the virtual community supporting one of the most successfully OSS projects, Linux. The objective is to provide conclusions for being successful in the development of future virtual communities. As companies learn to manage these virtual communities, they will develop smarter and faster ways to create value through them.

The interactions of the virtual community members of an ARM‐embedded Linux project website is analysed through social network analysis techniques. The participants' activity is studied and some conclusions about the participation features are obtained using the Gini coefficient. In particular, a participation inequality behaviour or a concentration on a small number of developers is clearly observed.

The paper deals with the guidelines that virtual communities should follow to be successful. Results about the structure of a successful virtual community and its time evolution are provided to determine the mentioned guidelines.

The research is limited to a particular virtual community engaged with the development of the ARM‐embedded Linux OSS. Other successful virtual communities can be analysed, and the conclusions could be compared. Anyway, the proposed analysis methodology can be extended to other virtual communities.

The paper fulfils the development and features of Internet virtual communities to be successful. Results have important implications over the development of new software business models based on virtual communities and open source software. Contributions about the best organisation of virtual communities leading to a successful development of the underlying project are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine some drivers of users’ participation in online social question-and-answer (Q&A) communities based on social cognitive theory and then identify the underlying mechanism of this process.

This study developed a research model to test the proposed hypotheses, and an online survey was employed to collected data. Totally, 313 valid responses were collected, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze these data.

This study empirically finds that the outcome expectations (personal outcome expectations and knowledge self-management outcome expectations) are positively related to participation in online social Q&A communities. At the same time, users’ self-efficacy positively influences their participation behaviors. It can not only directly motivate users’ participation, but also indirectly promote participation behaviors through the two dimensions of outcome expectations. Besides, perceived expertise and perceived similarity are two positive and significant environmental elements affecting users’ participation.

This study extends the understanding about how participation behaviors will be motivated in the context of online social Q&A communities. Drawing on the social cognitive theory, constructs were established based on the features of these communities. Meanwhile, some mediating effects in the motivating process were also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of unsustainable community platforms from community and information sharing perspectives using Google Lively as an example. The aim is to analyse what happens when a community platform is not sustainable and explore the reasons why Lively failed or succeeded as an arena of participation and information sharing.

The study is based on an ethnographically informed analysis of texts on Google Lively mined from the web and gathered using two small qualitative surveys.

The findings show that Lively fostered the emergence of several virtual communities that outlived the platform. Shared experience, experience of crisis and a distinct identity appeared to be significant factors that seemed to contribute to the success of analysed Livelian communities.

The study is based on a convenience sample and an analysis of one virtual community platform.

The results inform the development of community strategies for situations when a platform is closing and plans are being made for the sustained existence of the virtual community in new contexts.

This is the first comprehensive study on Google Lively. The findings can be expected to have relevance also in the context of comparable virtual community platforms.