The influences of participation and moderation on the development of a sense of virtual community Online publication date: Thu, 08-Dec-2016
by Michael Clay Carey; Hans K. Meyer
International Journal of Web Based Communities (IJWBC), Vol. 12, No. 4, 2016
Abstract: Sense of virtual community (SOVC) is an important indicator of website satisfaction and leads to higher levels of trust online and website use. More than 1,000 online users were surveyed about their activities in web forums, particularly how they view and interact with comments at the end of news stories. Overall internet participation and gender are the key predictors of how important an individual will report SOVC is and how much SOVC individuals report experiencing. The study also suggests that the development and enforcement of norms on an online comment forum is important to SOVC. Moderation of web interactions is shown to have a significant impact on whether an individual finds virtual community important. Findings suggest that the management of online forums is important to the development of SOVC - individuals in the study who favoured forums that were less restricted also reported experiencing lower levels of virtual community.
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