» Enhancing User Participation in Virtual Communities: Towards a Socio-Technical Process Model

Umar Ruhi

DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada


Presented: April 2006.

The recent unprecedented growth of virtual communities on the Internet in both the commercial and the personal domains has provided an impetus for researchers and practitioners to investigate factors that facilitate and inhibit user participation in these communities. Online communities play an important role in enabling information sharing, communication and social interaction among their participating members.

Despite the crucial realization that engaging and involving members constitutes a basic requirement for successful and thriving communities, little research has been done to study the behavioral characteristics of online community participants. The goal of this research is to identify and ascertain the determinants for sustaining and enhancing user participation in virtual communities. As a means of operationalizing this objective, the research aims to analyze the factors affecting user participation in virtual communities through a sequential exploratory mixed methods study of various social, professional and commercial online communities.

The research derives its conceptual framework from the fields of community informatics and socio-technical research, and aims to provide useful guidelines for enhancing the usability of various virtual community artifacts while supporting sociability within the context of different online community interactions. Such a framework that incorporates both usability and sociability aspects has been regarded as imperative for virtual community research. The planned research model constitutes an exploration of the interplay among specific factors affecting adoption and use of virtual communities, namely: i) online participation in virtual communities; ii) the usability of the virtual community interface; iii) trust users have with the virtual community institution; iv) trust users have with other virtual community members; and v) the ability of the virtual community to promote a sense of community.

The ensuing investigation findings can accordingly provide a socio-technical framework for analyzing virtual communities. It is expected that the research will add to the growing body of literature on virtual communities and community informatics.

Keywords: Virtual Communities, User Participation, Socio-Technical Research, Community Informatics.

Online: Link to Symposium Website with Presentation Abstract