Reciprocal intention in knowledge seeking: Examining social exchange theory in an online professional community

•The balance of knowledge growth and seeking effort is a key to seekers’ reciprocity.•Favorable perceptions of a community reduce the burden of knowledge-seeking effort.•A supportive community climate does not inflate the evaluation of knowledge quality.•Whether seekers are satisfied with perceived benefits is critical to reciprocity.•The evaluation of knowledge growth and seeking effort affects perceived benefits. The free-rider problem in an online professional community could, over time, undermine the wealth of the community and deplete the knowledge inventory to unacceptable levels. A knowledge seeker’s intention to reciprocate is motivated by perceived social benefits. An interpretation of intention to reciprocate cannot be fully addressed without investigating how knowledge seekers define the community support received in their knowledge-seeking process. This study suggests that perceived community support is the degree to which knowledge seekers perceive a supportive climate created by linking actors. An empirical study involving 471 knowledge seekers was conducted in an online professional community that seekers used to search for and acquire programming knowledge. The results indicated that knowledge seekers take perceived social benefits and perceived community support into account when forming an intention to reciprocate. In addition, perceived community support positively moderated the effect of knowledge-seeking effort on perceived social benefits. These findings contribute to the existing literature on knowledge-seeking by using social exchange theory to integrate perceived community support and better explain the intention of knowledge seekers to reciprocate in an online professional community. Theoretical and practical implications derived from the findings are further discussed.