Understanding virtual community members’ relationships from individual, group, and social influence perspectives

The purpose of this paper is to explore a model of how people are influenced from the perspectives of individuals (cognitive trust and affective trust), group (sense of virtual community), and social influence (normative influence and information influence) factors.

This research adopts structural equation modeling to test the proposed model and the structural model shows a good fit. This research sample consists of 312 members who have used Facebook for at least six months.

The results indicate the following. Both cognitive trust and affective trust have effects on members’ sense of virtual community. Cognitive trust, affective trust, and sense of virtual community have effects on both normative influence and informative influence, respectively. Members in a virtual community could create a sense of virtual community via affective trust. Members’ sense of virtual community partially mediates between cognitive/affective trust and normative/informative influence.

This study investigates the multiple perspectives of the interpersonal interaction between individual, community, and social influence.