Motives and Community Citizenship Behavior

Qualitative research results reveal that the level of Internet users’ participation in online communities is affected by few functional and emotional experiences during participation. Such experiences are believed to drive the corresponding motives of online community participation. They are a) Helping, b) Pro-social, c) Emotion Venting and d) Networking motives.

Helping Motive & Community Citizenship Behavior

In this research, the helping motive is defined as the level of compassion and reciprocity for the online community members which the drive is based upon personal need and satisfaction of the helper (Spitzmuller and Van Dyne, 2012). In essence, altruism, a closely related construct to the helping motive consistutes the concept of organization citizenship behavior. It is assumed that the altrusitic intention of the members of an organization would drive members to contribute to voluntary behavior for the good of the members and the organization (Organ, 1988).

Like any traditional offline communities, members in the online communities are willing to help those in need within the in-group. The motive of helping is, therefore, considered as a concern for online brand and anti-brand community members’ welfare in order to obtain satisfaction and enjoyment from such an altruistic intention (Brown et al., 2011). The helping motive has led to some dimensions of online community citizenship behavior for helping, providing feedback and recommendation, knowledge sharing and moderation (Groth, 2005, Lin, 2007).

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As mentioned before, unlike supporters of the brands who want to share with each other their experience with the brand, online anti-brand community members join to form a collective action to fight against issues not only related to the brand (e.g., use of child labor), but also social topics relating to the industry (e.g., social injustice, discrimination). Therefore it is believed that the motive of help will have different levels of impact on community citizenship behavior.

H3a1: Helping motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online brand community.

H3a2: Helping motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online anti-brand community.

Pro-social Motive & Community Citizenship Behavior

In the online community context, pro-social motive is defined here as the level of empathy and sense of responsibility that individuals intend to support the in-group members of the online community. In other research, organization citizenship behavior encompasses the concept of perceived fairness, organizational commitment, leader supportiveness, of which some of the constitutes such as perceived fairness are related to the pro-social behavior (Organ and Ryan, 1995)

Kozinets’ (2002) research also shows that communities play an important role in providing a commonplace for people with common concerns or interests to keep up with a certain social development. Prior research has indicated that pro-social behavior is likely to bring about online citizenship behavior, namely knowledge sharing and providing feedback (Eastin and LaRose, 2005, Huang et al., 2009, Rioux and Penner, 2001).

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In this research, pro-social motive, a closely related concept of pro-social behavior is considered positively related to members’ contribution to the sustainability of the online brand community in terms of community citizenship behavior.

H3b1: Pro-social motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online brand community.

As mentioned, pro-social value appears to associate with the organization citizenship behavior (e.g. perceived fairness), which is more relevant to the controversial topic (e.g., social responsibility) discussed in the online forum.

Based on insights from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews of the qualitative study, some respondents join an online anti-brand community to respond to collective action as a result of a need to understand the development of key concerns of the brand community as a responsible online citizen and supporter of the brand (Brunsting and Postmes, 2002).

H3b2: Pro-social motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online anti-brand community.

Emotion Venting Motive & Community Citizenship Behavior

The motive of emotion venting is defined as the deposition of cathartic expression of feelings and an unburdening to others to reduce uncertainty by resorting to channels for emotional and practical support (Dewe and Guest, 1990).

The findings from the community experience research consistently show that people join online communities to seek emotional release (e.g., expression of bad experience) through the posting of message and sharing of experience with the online community members in the forum (Tuzovic, 2010, Wiertz and de Ruyter, 2007).

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As a result of expecting stronger support to the online community members, members with a stronger motive for emotion venting in return would expect to provide support to the in-group members, which community citizenship behavior is considered the most common support that the online communities and members need to maintain the sustainability and frequent visit of the community (Joe and Lin, 2008).

Members share their anger and frustration with like-minded Internet users in online brand and anti-brand communities because they wish to provide each other with emotional and practical support regarding a certain issue about the brand or the firm. As such, people with strong motive of emotion venting would tend to positively carry out community citizenship behavior such as providing feedback, recommendation and sharing knowledge.

Qualitative research results have found that online anti-brand communities serve as a media to provide a 24/7 platform for the members to vent their emotions in the community. There has been an indication that there is a dark side of online media that provides a venue to allow multiple stakeholders to vent their negative emotion regarding brands and organizations as a result of the negative experience and reaction to the malpractice of the organizations, which trigger community citizenship behavior such as the co-creation of knowledge and feedback content (Vallaster and von Wallpach, 2013).

H3c1: Emotion venting motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online brand community.

H3c2: Emotion venting motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online anti-brand community.

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Networking Motive & Community Citizenship Behavior

The motivation of networking refers to the intention of establishing and maintaining a contract with others for needs of social support, friendship and intimacy (Dholakia et al. 2004). By participating in online community, a person can socialize not only with family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, but also the link-minded people to share their common interests and topics in life (Nambisan and Baron, 2007).

Past research has evidenced that the motivation of networking with people is directly and positively correlated with citizenship behavior when an individual believes that citizenship behavior could facilitate the achievement of good image and the need to do something to fill the gap between one’s perceived good citizen image and the current image others hold of him/her (Bolino, 1999, Grant and Mayer, 2009).

The findings of a few online social networking studies have revealed that Internet users join social networking media, create their own strategic profiles and selected behavior for status enhancement and recognition seeking through networking with others (Fang and Neufeld, 2009, Rosenberg and Egbert, 2011, Schlenker and Pontari, 2000).

Naturally, members with a strong motive to network are believed to be more eager to build up friendship and close tie with others. It is not surprising that they are willing to practice the dimensions of community citizenship behavior (feedback, recommendation, helping others, knowledge sharing, willing to moderate), which are associated with networking in both online brand and anti-brand community.

H3d1: Networking motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online brand community.

H3d2: Networking motive is positively related to community citizenship behavior in online anti-brand community.

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