Knowledge Sharing in a Virtual Community of a Hotel Association: From Free Riders to Active Knowledge Sharers

Virtual communities play an important role in communication with globalization and the development of information and communication technology. However, how the members transfer from free riders to active knowledge sharers in virtual communities is unclear. At the same time, little attention was put on QQ group, a new type of virtual communities that serves the needs of small groups of people. Moreover, less attention was put on the virtual communities of the hotel industry. By doing a case study in a QQ group of the Guangzhou Hotel Association, this paper identifies the factors that influence people to share knowledge in the QQ group with small groups of people from social capital and social cognitive perspectives, aiming to describe the process in which a member becomes an active knowledge sharer in a virtual community. This present study holds that the facets of loyalty will influence the quality of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing: identification-trust and sharing vision will influence the quality...