What Makes a Helpful Knowledge Contribution in Online Communities? A Heuristic-Systematic Model

Abstract

Online knowledge communities have revolutionized the way knowledge is exchanged through the Internet. Usefulness voting plays an important role in online knowledge exchange, because it facilitates the assessment of knowledge quality by involving a potentially large pool of experts in casting votes on knowledge contribution submitted to the community. Informed by the theoretical framework of systematic-heuristic model, this research proposes a research model to explain how content cues (including informativeness, relevance, diversity, and media richness) and source credibility cue (contributor reputation) affect usefulness voting of knowledge contribution by online peers. This study not only provides a nuanced understanding of the effects of content and source credibility cues of knowledge contribution on usefulness voting, but also provides practical implications for developers and managers to develop or implement information system design features and policies that can better support problem solving by exchanging high quality user-generated content in online communities.

Meeting Name

27th annual Americas Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS 2021 (2021: Aug. 9-13, Virtual)

Department(s)

Business and Information Technology

Keywords and Phrases

Heuristic-systematic model; Knowledge contribution; Online knowledge communities; Usefulness voting

International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

978-173363258-4

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2021 Association for Information Systems (AIS), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

13 Aug 2021

Link to Full Text

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