The Effects of Community Characteristics and Member Retention of Virtual Communities

This paper investigates the antecedents of member retention for virtual communities. This research theorizes the motivating mechanism from both perspectives of the information seekers and providers. Four antecedents-communication breadth, depth, responsiveness, and cross-posting-have a statistically significant influence on member retention. Furthermore, we have found that communication breadth and depth have a diminishing effect on the marginal impact on member retention as well as the interaction between these factors has a negative impact on member retention although each of them separately has a positive impact. The implications of this study help understand the dynamics of knowledge sharing in virtual communities.