Identifying the drivers of innovation-related knowledge sharing in the online game user community

Abstract

The online user community has been highlighted as an important external source for a firm’s product or service innovation. It is users’ freely sharing innovation-related knowledge sharing that enables the community to work as a firm’s vital source of innovation. And lead users play the most important role in innovation-related knowledge sharing in the online user community. Study 1 in this thesis integrates individual motivations and social capital based on the theory of planned behavior to deepen our understanding about what drives users to freely share innovation-related knowledge in the user community. Study 2 in this thesis integrates lead user theory with decomposed theory of planned behavior to look into how lead userness is linked to users’ innovation-related knowledge sharing in the online user community. Based on the empirical analysis of 1,244 online survey data of game users in the online user community in South Korea, study 1 shows that intrinsic motivation, shared goals and social trust are the salient factors to promote users’ innovation-related knowledge sharing. It not also shows how social capital forms and influences users’ innovation-related knowledge sharing but also that social tie work can work adversely contingent on the innovator-users or the non-innovator-users group. Study 2 sheds a light on the relation between lead userness and innovation-related knowledge sharing. Lead userness significantly positively influences self-efficacy of innovation-related knowledge sharing regardless of the different user groups. But it has a significant positive impact on the innovator-users’ attitude toward sharing of innovation-related knowledge while it does not on the non-innovator-users’ attitude. With the new findings, academic and practical implications are discussed.