The Influence of Media Capabilities on Knowledge Contribution in Online Communities

Online communities (OCs) have historically focused on building knowledge repositories, but as OCs add more synchronous communication, it is important to understand how different communication capabilities influence user commitment, individual growth, and knowledge contribution. We studied 452 members of a popular OC in Taiwan and found that both connectivity (direct user-to-user interaction) and communality (knowledge repositories) influence member commitment, but connectivity has a stronger influence than communality on knowledge contribution and individual growth. We also found that four media capabilities (transmission velocity, parallelism, symbol sets, and reprocessability) have strong influence on both connectivity and communality. These findings suggest that managers of OCs should add software capabilities that help OC members find like-minded members, enable instant messaging among members, and provide richer communication beyond simple text messages. Online communities (OCs) have become common, both in work settings and in the personal lives of individuals. Communication among members of OCs is similar in many ways to communication among members of work and nonwork teams (e.g., both synchronous and asynchronous communication are possible). Historically, knowledge repositories have been the focus of OCs, but as OCs add more synchronous communication, it is important to understand how different communication capabilities influence user commitment, individual growth, and knowledge contribution. We developed a theoretical model that argues that the five media capabilities of media synchronicity theory influence the two information technology (IT)-enabled public goods of communality (in the form of knowledge repositories) and connectivity (in the form of direct user-to-user interactions) and that these two in turn affect task outcomes such as community commitment, individual growth, and knowledge contribution. We tested this model using three waves of data collection (two surveys and one set of archival behavioral data) from the same 452 members of a popular OC. Our results show that four of the five media capabilities have strong influences on connectivity and communality and through them on task outcomes. Connectivity (direct user-to-user interaction) has a stronger influence on knowledge contribution than communality (knowledge repositories). Our model explains large effect sizes for connectivity and communality and medium to large sizes for task ou