This study investigates knowledge contributors’ satisfaction with a distinct type of virtual communities (i.e., transactional virtual communities, TVCs), where knowledge sharing is guided mainly under the principle of economic exchange, and cost–benefit tradeoff is the primary motive for knowledge sharing. Drawing upon the goal attainment theory, we examine the effects of two types of benefits (i.e., extrinsic and intrinsic) and two types of costs (i.e., actual and opportunity) on knowledge contributors’ satisfaction, and highlight the mediating role of perceived net goal attainment. A field survey with 205 subjects in a TVC in China is conducted to test the research model.
The Internet revolution, such as the emergence of Web 2.0, has led to the proliferation of virtual communities (VCs) worldwide [30]. The blossoming of these VCs enables knowledge and information exchange for mutual learning and problem solving without physical constraints [25], [30], [49] and [50]. The most commonly known VCs are professional virtual communities (PVCs) or virtual communities of practice (CoPs) [11] and [25], in which participants voluntarily share their knowledge with and acquire needed knowledge from others. However, the knowledge provided by participants in these VCs is taken as a public good that is free to all participants, and thus, it yields no economic value. A call for extracting economic value from knowledge shared within virtual communities has recently motivated practitioners to explore opportunities for capitalizing on this knowledge to realize that economic value [32].
Since 2005, a new form of virtual community that supports this transformation, which we call transactional virtual communities (TVCs) in our study, has emerged and rapidly developed worldwide. The most popular applications of TVCs include Amazon's Mechanical Turk and myTino.com in the US and Taskcn.com and Witkey.com in China. We term these applications TVCs to highlight their distinct knowledge exchange models: instead of contributing free knowledge as in traditional VCs, participants in TVCs transact their knowledge for economic returns. In other words, knowledge seekers post tasks and provide certain monetary compensation for sourcing others’ knowledge to complete those tasks. TVCs are sometimes also called Witkeys, connoting “the key of wisdom,” or crowdsourcing, connoting sourcing ideas from the crowd [23].
The business model of TVCs has achieved enormous success over the past years. For instance, more than 20 websites adopt this business model in China, and the scale and revenue of these websites are considerable. One typical website, Taskcn.com, already has more than 2.5 million participants, over 20,000 tasks, and over USD 3 million in task rewards.1 Similarly, over 80,000 knowledge-sourcing requests, human intellectual tasks in their terms, have been posted on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
The realization of the tremendous business potential of TVCs, however, hinges on the ongoing participation of their knowledge contributors (termed “solvers” in this special research context [51]). After all, the economic value of this community model will not be realized unless solvers continue to spend their time and effort contributing their knowledge to problem solving [15] and [43]. To ensure their ongoing participation, prior research suggests that it is critical to keep participants satisfied with their experience in VCs [35], [36] and [46]. Given the criticality of satisfaction, our study aims to develop a better understanding of the factors that predict solver satisfaction with TVCs.
Participant satisfaction has been studied in traditional VCs primarily from a social, relational perspective [11] and [30] because knowledge is exchanged not based on monetary returns but for social, relational reasons (e.g., following the principle of social exchange) [11], [48] and [49]. However, in TVCs, knowledge exchange is a transactional or commercial activity (rather than a social activity), and the exchange principle is highly economics-driven [5] and [18]. Thus, the social perspective used in the prior VC research may not be contextually justified to explain solver satisfaction in our TVC context. We must therefore seek a more contextually specific theoretical account that reflects the economic exchange principle that underlies TVC participation behavior to explain solver satisfaction.
To this end, we draw on goal attainment theory [7], [29] and [42] to explain solver satisfaction in the TVC context by attributing satisfaction to a trade-off evaluation of benefits and costs with regard to knowledge-sharing behavior. Specifically, we identify two types of benefits (i.e., extrinsic and intrinsic benefits) and two types of costs (i.e., actual costs and opportunity costs) and incorporate the trade-off evaluation between them using a concept called perceived net gain attainment (PNGA).
Our study offers two important contributions to the field of VC research. First, we provide theoretical insights into the determinants of solver satisfaction in TVCs by drawing on goal attainment theory. Grounded in this theory, we highlight not only benefits but also cost concerns, particularly opportunity costs, as crucial factors in the TVC context. Second, with the inclusion of both benefits and costs in our theoretical model, we add to the literature by establishing the importance of PNGA as a trade-off between benefits and costs for solver satisfaction. Specifically, we stress that benefits cannot directly influence solver satisfaction but that together with costs, they can indirectly influence satisfaction through the full mediating effect of PNGA.
As an early study on knowledge-sharing behavior in the TVC context, this paper establishes the distinctions between RVCs and TVCs and provides for new understanding of solver satisfaction using goal attainment theory. As knowledge exchange has been transformed from a social to an economic exchange activity, the effects of various factors in the TVC context are different from those in the RVC context. Specifically, perceived benefits still play an important role, whereas perceived costs are no longer negligible in TVCs. Moreover, PNGA, which captures the trade-off between benefits and costs, is confirmed to be a necessary mediator for linking perceived benefits, perceived costs, and solver satisfaction. This study contributes to current theories by extending the previous understanding of knowledge sharing in RVCs to TVCs and by theorizing on the important roles of cost and PNGA in this new context.
