Antecedents of Citizenship Behaviors in Open Professional Virtual Communities

As with organizational development, citizenship behavior should be central to the development and success of open professional virtual communities. An increasing literature emphasizes on predicting knowledge contribution behaviors in virtual communities (VC) from the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation or benefit perspectives. In line with the consumer behavior literature that distinguishes between hedonic and utilitarian shopping values, we classify these motivations or benefits of knowledge sharing into either hedonic or utilitarian. We propose and test a theoretical model in which hedonic value and utilitarian value are operationalized as formative second-order constructs and examine their effects on members’ satisfaction with sharing knowledge and citizenship behaviors in an open professional VC. Data collected from 428 members of one VC provide support for the proposed model. The results help understanding how utilitarian value and hedonic value differ in their relationships with satisfaction and VCCB of knowledge contributors. Implications for theory and practice and limitations are discussed.