Exploring the antecedents of electronic word-of-mouth communication: Using involvement perspective

Abstract

With the advance of the World Wide Web, more and more people learn new knowledge and share information from traditional face-to-face communication to online communities on the Internet. An online community is a platform on the Internet, where members read articles, post comments, and interact with other members. However, in operating and maintaining an online community for a long term, many community managers face this problem: many community members only browse articles of their interest; they do not post new articles, comments, replies, or provide any meaningful information. Facing this problem, community managers should realize why members share and provide information. This study regards involvement as a motive to explore word-of-month communication (a sharing behavior) and develops two antecedent variables: cognitive involvement and affective involvement. It seeks to know how these two types of involvement motivate members to perform electronic word-of-month communication. At last, this study aims to provide online community managers with better solutions and suggestions to work on their communities.