Personality or Environment: A Multilevel Study of Virtual Community Citizenship Behavior

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The research motivated by situational strength theory and multilevel theory, proposing a cross-level model to examine whether virtual community citizenship behaviors (VCCBs) are affected by community members’ satisfaction, and if the effect moderated by other members’ citizenship behaviors or not. Also examining that if members’ personality of agreeableness and exchange ideology would have an effect on satisfaction, which moderated by reward for participation. This study utilizes a sample of 525 consumers collected from the 42 virtual communities of consumptions (VCCs) to test the research model. This research uses the Hierarchical Linear Model to analyze the data because of the members are embedded in communities. Resulting that satisfaction has a positive effects on VCCBs, which is positive moderated by community-level consensus on MCBs. Agreeableness has a positive relationship with satisfaction, which is positive moderated by reward for participation. The exchange ideology has no effect on satisfaction, but has an interaction effect with reward for participation on satisfaction. There are some implications, limitations and future research would be discussed in the essay.