The influence of membership fluidity on the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in online knowledge communities

Abstract

PurposeIn the extant research on online knowledge communities (OKCs), little attention has been paid to the influence of membership fluidity on the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems. This article aims to fill this gap.Design/methodology/approachBased on the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) framework, this paper constructs a simulation model to study the coevolution of these two systems under different levels of membership fluidity.FindingsBy analyzing the evolution of these systems with the vector autoregression (VAR) method, we find that social and knowledge systems become more orderly as the coevolution progresses. Furthermore, in communities with low membership fluidity, the microlevel of the social system (i.e. users) drives the coevolution, whereas in communities with high membership fluidity, the microlevel of the knowledge system (i.e. users' views) drives the coevolution.Originality/valueThis paper extends the application of the ASA framework and enriches the literature on membership fluidity of online communities and the literature on driving factors for coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs. On a practical level, our work suggests that community administrators should adopt different strategies for different membership fluidity to efficiently promote the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs.