• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1-16
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• 2012

Nowadays, many first-time Internet users start off heavily using SNSs (Social Network Sites), such as Cyworld, Facebook, and Twitter. The reason for the growth of SNS use is closely related to the various services of gaming, playing, using entertainment items, sharing knowledge etc., provided by the SNS; technically, the most important of the services provided would be the behavior of sharing knowledge among people connected and networked in the site. In sum, we assume that the users may communicate well with each other and pay attention to building a close social network using the abovementioned activities. However, researchers have just begun to focus on the issues explaining why Internet users rush into SNSs and enjoy their time there. Therefore, we investigated the reasons for posting and sharing knowledge voluntarily on the SNS and how others respond to the posted knowledge and are actually affected by the behavior. We applied social identity theory and social capital theory in this study to find which network externalities in SNSs may affect online identity-based attachment and cause them to produce a knowledge sharing generation. We found that people's online identity in SNSs is closely related to and influences knowledge sharing. This empirical study resulted in the importance of social relations in SNSs, which leads to sharing knowledge.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.117-144
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• 2008

Lots of virtual communities and online businesses presently derive their primary sources of revenues through advertising, but nevertheless are plagued with marginal profitability though they might possess a significant user base. In the light of the need for an efficacious business model, there have been recent insights of an online community in particular reaping profits through an innovative and lucrative revenue generation method that earns by selling digital items. There have been some obvious evidences (e.g., Cyworld, SecondLife, Habo Hotel, etc.) that online communities can be profitable through their unique business model of selling digital items. However, there is lack of understanding about the motivation of purchasing digital items. This study tries to identify the main motivators of digital item purchases based on social/individual identity theory and self-presentation theory. "Digital items", otherwise known as "virtual assets", may include online avatars, accessories for the avatars, decorative ornaments like furniture, digital wallpapers, skins, background music and virtual weapons used for Internet games. These digital items are employed by users for representation and articulation in the online space, especially to create and enhance their online profiles in web pages and games. Prices for digital items typically range from a few cents to a few dollars each. Based on the theoretical framework like social identity theory and self-presentation theory, we developed the research model and proposed seven hypotheses. An analysis of 225 members of Cyworld found that digital item purchase intention in virtual world is affected by both members' need for self-presentation and need for affiliation. We also found that the need for self-presentation is significantly increased by innovativeness of members, community group norm, and community involvement. We concluded that the need for self-presentation could be a key variable for profitable business model in online community service industry. However, neither individual self-efficacy nor the need for affiliation significantly influenced the need for self-presentation which triggers purchase intention of digital items. In term of the theoretical and practical contribution, this study can be a pioneering empirical research that investigates the purchase intention of digital items based on social identity theory and self-presentation theory in the online context. Also, the findings of our study are valuable and practical for practitioners in the market who wish to adopt or improve the business model of selling digital items in an online community. From the findings, it can be seen that innovativeness of users, community group norm, and community involvement are three significant factors that influence need for self-presentation of users which ultimately leads to their intentions to buy digital items. These findings put forth that virtual community providers and online businesses selling digital items should prioritize their efforts and focus on these three factors if they want to increase the sales of these digital items and generate greater revenues. This study provides important implications for academic researchers and practitioners to understand why the community members pay money for their digital items in virtual world and how the practitioners can increase the sales of digital items in an online community. A couple of limitations of the study and future research directions are also discussed.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.23-45
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• 2011

People could possess different self-identity under virtual world from physical world because of anonymity of the virtual world and this difference could influence their behavior in the virtual world. Based on self-discrepancy theory, this research proposes that continuous use model in self-expression goal. We defined the difference bet ween actual self~identity and ideal self~identity in the virtual world as "self-discrepancy in virtual world", and the difference between actual self-identity in the physical world and actual self-identity in the virtual world as "cross-world self-discrepancy". Before testing hypothesis, we compare the actual self-identity in the online community with the actual self-identity in the physical world, and with ideal self-identity in the virtual world. We derived an index for two different types of self-identity in terms of Personal Self-identity and Social Self-identity through factor analysis. Our results show that online community members have a higher level of ideal self-identity than actual self-identity in online community, and they have better personal self-identity in online community than physical world while a lower level of social self-identity in online community than physical world. The results of the hypothesis testing analysis based on 300 respondents showed that "self-discrepancy in virtual world" negatively influenced perceived usefulness for self-expression while "cross-world self-discrepancy" positively influenced perceived usefulness for self-expression. The perceived usefulness for self-expression and ease of use positively influence both continuous use and knowledge contribution. Specially, the effect of perceived usefulness for self-expression on knowledge contribution is much bigger than the effect of ease of use. This study extends self-discrepancy theory to virtual worlds by suggesting various types of self-discrepancy and by applying the effect of self-discrepancies in online community. Also, this study extends technology acceptance model in the personal goal in terms of self-expression. This study hopes to offer practical insights by suggesting positive effect of self-discrepancy on behavior in the online community.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.25-40
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• 2011

Today, Internet users start off using heavily SNS(Social Network Site) such like, Facebook, Twitter. The reason of the growth of using SNS would be closely related to the various services of gaming, playing, entertainment items, sharing information etc., provided by the SNS, technically, the most important one out of the services provided would be behaving of sharing knowledge among people who connected and networked in the site. In sum, we assume that the users may communicate well each other and pay attention to build closely a social network using that kind of activities. However, nevertheless the new trends of communications and sharing knowledge become popular, researchers have just began the research issues in explaining why Internet user rush into SNS and enjoy the time in there. Therefore, we investigate on the reasons of posting knowledge voluntarily in the SNS and how others response to the posted information and actually affected by the behavior. We appled personal relation and social identity theory for this study, which personal relation in SNS may affect on social identity and make them produce knowledge generation. We found that social identity and involvement in SNS is closely related and influence knowledge creation and generation. This empirical study resulted in the importance of social relations in SNS, which leads to a sharing knowledge.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.257-278
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• 2017

The paper examines the ownership structure and the firm value of online firms in the world. Data are gathered by using FACTIVA database for firms in the Dow Jones index for the 2014 fiscal year. The Ordinary Least Squares regressions, the Generalized Linear Model, and the model selection criteria are employed to analyze the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. The paper tests theories such as the convergence of interest theory, the managerial entrenchment theory, and the eclectic theory. The paper finds that the ownership structure has an influence on the firm value depending on the rank of the large shareholders. While the first large shareholders have a negative association with the firm value, the presence of the second and the third large shareholders have a positive influence on the firm value. The paper also finds that the identity of the largest shareholders whether they are insiders or outsiders have an influence on the firm value. The proportion of shareholding by a large shareholder and her identity are variables which predict a firm value.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.755-770
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• 2020

As the postsecondary school-age population continues to decline, universities are building identities to differentiate themselves and create a favorable impression among this cohort. We investigated the role of logo-bearing products as a way of promoting university identity, specifically, the effects of ingroup ties, ingroup affect, and centrality on attitude toward university logo products and purchase intention. This study further examined the moderating effects of perceived university prestige on the relationship between logo product attitude and in-store purchase intention, and the moderating effect of online shopping frequency on the relationship between logo product attitude and online purchase intention. We conducted a survey of undergraduate and graduate students at a university in Seoul. Survey responses (N=561) were collected and processed using SPSS 23.0. Multiple regression analysis showed that ingroup ties and affect had significant effects on product attitude. However, centrality had no significant effect on attitude toward the product. Product attitude had a direct significant effect on both in-store and online purchase intention. Perceived university prestige moderated the relationship between product attitude and in-store purchase intention. Moreover, online shopping frequency moderated the relationship between product attitude and online purchase intention. The results of this study are expected to provide fundamental knowledge for developing product strategy of logo products.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.101-123
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• 2012

Currently, Social Media, it has widely a renown keyword and its related social trends and businesses have been fastly applied into various contexts. Social media has become an important research area for scholars interested in online technologies and cyber space and their social impacts. Social media is not only including web-based services but also mobile-based application services that allow people to share various style information and knowledge through online connection. Social media users have tendency to common identity- and bond-attachment through interactions such as 'thumbs up', 'reply note', 'forwarding', which may have driven from various factors and may result in delivering information, sharing knowledge, and specific experiences et al. Even further, almost of all social media sites provide and connect unknown strangers depending on shared interests, political views, or enjoyable activities, and other stuffs incorporating the creation of contents, which provides benefits to users. As fast developing digital devices including smartphone, tablet PC, internet based blogging, and photo and video clips, scholars desperately have began to study regarding diverse issues connecting human beings' motivations and the behavioral results which may be articulated by the format of antecedents as well as consequences related to contents that people create via social media. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, or Cyworld users are more and more getting close each other and build up their relationships by a different style. In this sense, people use social media as tools for maintain pre-existing network, creating new people socially, and at the same time, explicitly find some business opportunities using personal and unlimited public networks. In terms of theory in explaining this phenomenon, social capital is a concept that describes the benefits one receives from one's relationship with others. Thereby, social media use is closely related to the form and connected of people, which is a bridge that can be able to achieve informational benefits of a heterogeneous network of people and common identity- and bonding-attachment which emphasizes emotional benefits from community members or friend group. Social capital would be resources accumulated through the relationships among people, which can be considered as an investment in social relations with expected returns and may achieve benefits from the greater access to and use of resources embedded in social networks. Social media using for their social capital has vastly been adopted in a cyber world, however, there has been little explaining the phenomenon theoretically how people may take advantages or opportunities through interaction among people, why people may interactively give willingness to help or their answers. The individual consciously express themselves in an online space, so called, common identity- or bonding-attachments. Common-identity attachment is the focus of the weak ties, which are loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support, whereas common-bonding attachment is explained that between individuals in tightly-knit, emotionally close relationship such as family and close friends. The common identify- and bonding-attachment are mainly studying on-offline setting, which individual convey an impression to others that are expressed to own interest to others. Thus, individuals expect to meet other people and are trying to behave self-presentation engaging in opposite partners accordingly. As developing social media, individuals are motivated to disclose self-disclosures of open and honest using diverse cues such as verbal and nonverbal and pictorial and video files to their friends as well as passing strangers. Social media context, common identity- and bond-attachment for self-presentation seems different compared with face-to-face context. In the realm of social media, social users look for self-impression by posting text messages, pictures, video files. Under the digital environments, people interact to work, shop, learn, entertain, and be played. Social media provides increasingly the kinds of intention and behavior in online. Typically, identity and bond social capital through self-presentation is the intentional and tangible component of identity. At social media, people try to engage in others via a desired impression, which can maintain through performing coherent and complementary communications including displaying signs, symbols, brands made of digital stuffs(information, interest, pictures, etc,). In marketing area, consumers traditionally show common-identity as they select clothes, hairstyles, automobiles, logos, and so on, to impress others in any given context in a shopping mall or opera. To examine these social capital and attachment, we combined a social capital theory with an attachment theory into our research model. Our research model focuses on the common identity- and bond-attachment how they are formulated through social capitals: cognitive capital, structural capital, relational capital, and individual characteristics. Thus, we examined that individual online kindness, self-rated expertise, and social relation influence to build common identity- and bond-attachment, and the attachment effects make an impact on both the willingness to help, however, common bond seems not to show directly impact on information sharing. As a result, we discover that the social capital and attachment theories are mainly applicable to the context of social media and usage in the individual networks. We collected sample data of 256 who are using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Cyworld and analyzed the suggested hypotheses through the Structural Equation Model by AMOS. This study analyzes the direct and indirect relationship between the social network service usage and outcomes. Antecedents of kindness, confidence of knowledge, social relations are significantly affected to the mediators common identity-and bond attachments, however, interestingly, network externality does not impact, which we assumed that a size of network was a negative because group members would not significantly contribute if the members do not intend to actively interact with each other. The mediating variables had a positive effect on toward willingness to help. Further, common identity attachment has stronger significant on shared information.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.187-209
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• 2022

The objective of this study was to conduct a 'Theory of Home Economics Education' class using online problem-based learning(PBL) for prospective home economics(HE) teachers. The aim was to enable teachers to analyze the learning experience in the classroom, and to prepare operational strategies for online PBL on this basis. In order to achieve this, online PBL was applied to 31 students participating in the 'Theory of Home Economics Education' at the Department of HE in a university in Seoul, and the results were collected from the learning process. This also involved a reflective journal, a survey on the learning experience and the impacts was conducted. Moreover, analysis was undertaken on the learning activities, learning difficulties, and improvements. The main research results are as follows. Firstly, students accessed Webex, an online video conferencing program, and performed two PBL tasks: 'Making Home Economics Promotion Materials' and 'Presenting Teaching Strategies to Improve Learner's Immersion in Online Classes'. Secondly, learners established their own identity of HE learned about the HE class plans themselves. They also encountered realistic experience as HE teachers and learned communication and collaboration skills. Furthermore, they acquired creative problem-solving and self-directed learning ability, community consciousness, as well as the attitude of consideration and respect. Thirdly, students lacked knowledge of learning content and encountered difficulty in solving data research, analysis processes, and unstructured problems. They were affected by a lack of time and encountered problem in communicating with other team members in an online environment. As an improvement in online class operation, it was considrered necessary to reduce the learning burden by securing time and reducing the number of assignments, as well as to explain active interaction with instructors and PBL.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2013

Open Source Software Development (OSSD) differentiates itself from traditional closed software development in that it reveals its source codes online and allows anyone to participate in projects. Even though its success was in doubt, many of the open collaborative working models produced successful results. Academia started to get interested in how developers are willing to participate even when there are no extrinsic rewards for their efforts. Many studies tried to explain developers' motivations, and the pursuit of ideology, reputation, and altruism are found to be the answers. Those studies, however, focused mostly on how the first contribution is made out of a certain motivation. Nowadays, OSSD reaches at its maturity and 70% of professional developers have used or utilized open source software or code in their works. As the proportion of people experiencing OSS, the accounts from previous studies are expected to be weakened. Also, extant literature fails to explain how the motivation of participating in OSS evolves over time and experiences. Given that changing over time or over experiences is the natural in the perception of motivation, studies in an attempt to understand how the motivation changes or evolves are in need. In this study, we aimed to explain how the perception about OSS from past usage or related experiences leads to the intention to sustain OSS participations. By doing so, we try to bridge the gap between previous studies and the actual phenomenon. We argued that perceived instrumentality about OSS learned from past experiences will first affect the formation of organizational identity towards general OSS community. And once the organizational identity is formed, it will affect the one's following behaviors related to OSS development, most likely to sustain the favoring stance toward OSS community. Our research distinguishes itself from previous one in that it divides the paths from organizational identity formed to the intention to sustain the voluntary helping behaviors, by altruistic and conforming intentions. Drawing on this structural model, we could explain how organizational identity engages in forming the sustaining intention from past experiences, and that the intention to help at individual level and organizational level works at different level in OSS community. We grounded our arguments on Social identity theory and Organizational Citizenship theory. We examined our assumption by constructing a structural equation model (SEM) and had 88 developers to answer our online surveys. The result is analyzed by PLS (partial least square) method. Consequently, all paths but one in our model are supported, the one which assumed the association between perceived instrumentality and altruistic intention. Our results provide directions in designing online collaborative platforms where open access collaboration is meant to occur. Theoretically, our study suggests that organizational citizenship behavior can occur from organizational identity, even in bottom-up organizational settings. More specifically, we also argue to consider both organizational level and individual level of motivation in inducing sustained participations within the platforms. Our result can be interpreted to indicate the importance of forming organizational identity in sustaining the participatory behaviors. It is because there was no direct association between perceived instrumentality from past experiences and altruistic behavior, but the perception of organizational identity bridges the two constructs. This means that people with no organizational identity can sustain their participations through conforming intention from only the perception of instrumentality, but it needs little more than that for the people to feel the intention to directly help someone in the community-first to form the self-identity as a member of the given community.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.1-26
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• 2011

As brand is increasingly important as a competitive source and information and communication technology based on Internet is rapidly advanced, many companies have paid attention to online brand community that is expected to help strengthen the customer's awareness on their products and services. This study suggests four factors-interaction, purpose, playfulness, reward-that facilitate online brand community commitment, and examines the effect of online brand community commitment on brand loyalty from the perspective of social identity theory. For this purpose, 243 sample data were collected from three online brand community sites and the proposed research model was empirically tested using LISREL 8.7 based on structural equation model. In conclusion, this study proposed theoretical and practical implications along with its limitations and future studies.