Knowledge sharing and social media: Altruism, perceived online attachment motivation, and perceived online relationship commitment
Computers in Human BehaviorPublished 17 July 2014
Will W.K., Albert KM Chan
Citations375
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score2.92
SNIP3.35
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TL;DR
The theory of belonging and the intrinsic motivation of altruism are drawn on to explore the factors contributing to knowledge sharing behavior and find that perceived online attachment motivation and perceived online relationship commitment have positive, direct, and significant effects on online knowledge sharing.
Abstract
Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have become extremely popular. Facebook, for example, has more than a billion registered users and thousands of millions of units of information are shared every day, including short phrases, articles, photos, and audio and video clips. However, only a tiny proportion of these sharing units trigger any type of knowledge exchange that is ultimately beneficial to the users. This study draws on the theory of belonging and the intrinsic motivation of altruism to explore the factors contributing to knowledge sharing behavior. Using a survey of 299 high school students applying for university after the release of the public examination results, we find that perceived online attachment motivation (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) and perceived online relationship commitment (β = 0.49, p < 0.001) have positive, direct, and significant effects on online knowledge sharing (R2 0.568). Moreover, when introduced into the model, altruism has a direct and significant effect on online knowledge sharing (β = 0.46, p < 0.001) and the total variance explained by the extended model increases to 64.9%. The implications of the findings are discussed.
Keywords
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