Understanding participation on video sharing communities: The role of self-construal and community interactivity

A community's development and sustainability rely heavily on user participation. Facing fierce competition among video websites, many companies have been consciously elevating user participation through the practice of video sharing communities. However, few studies have discussed this phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of self-construal and community interactivity in promoting user participation on video sharing communities. Based on Triadic reciprocal determinism, a framework was developed to explain the mechanism of user participation behaviors on video sharing communities. Users from a video sharing community in China were invited to accomplish an online survey, and 184 valid responses returned. Structural equation modeling with SmartPLS 3.0 was adopted to evaluate the research model. The empirical results show that self-construal (independent-construal and interdependent construal) and community interactivity (active control and reciprocal communication) are positively associated with user participation. In turn, user participation significantly increases perceived customer value. In addition, self-construal positively moderates the relationship between community interactivity and user participation. The present study is among the first attempts to empirically consider the effect of self-construal and community interactivity within a video sharing community context in a comprehensive and systematical way.