Why Do Users Participate in Online Communities? the Effect of Motivational Affordances, Comments, and Peer Contribution on Continuance

Online communities are increasingly being used by technical professionals and aspirants to access information and knowledge, discuss and share experiences, and collaborate in solving problems. Recently, the application of gamification in non-game contexts has attracted the attention of both practitioners and researchers and has generally been found to have a positive effect on user experiences. This research incorporates community design mechanisms and social mechanisms into a comprehensive model to explain the variance in continued online community participation. The research model is tested by using survival analysis models on a dataset collected from an online question and answer community. This research contributes by not only extending our current understanding of participant involvement in online communities, but also by shedding light on the design and management of online communities focused on knowledge building