Call for Papers: Virtual Community Participation and Motivation: Cross-Disciplinary Theories

This book intends to give a comprehensive view on virtual community participation. With the power to gather people with similar interests together, virtual communities have gained attention by not only practitioners, but researchers, as well. Various studies have been done to explore why people participate in virtual communities since it is only after aggregating a certain amount of members that a virtual community can be viable. Virtual community participation refers to those behaviours in which members mainly participate. Basically, past researchers have found two types of behaviours: lurking and active participation. Although many studies discussed the motivations to participate in virtual communities, including gift economy, pursuit of power, sense of belonging, sense of inclusion, relationship building, and so forth, none of them have given a clear and comprehensive framework on the reasons for virtual community participation. As the field is now in a position to call for a synthesis publication to integrate all aspects of virtual community participation theories, it’s important to edit a book to give both researchers and general virtual community practitioner the theoretical guidelines. This book will bring together the issues that managers, practitioners, and researchers must consider when planning, implementing, and managing members in virtual communities.

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