Research on participation behavior of users in internet-based innovation community: An empirical investigation

Internet-based users innovation community can be defined as mediated social spaces in digital environment that allow groups to form and be sustained primarily through ongoing communication processes. The members of innovation communities are usually lead users of specific kind of products, they put up web sites or participate in the existent one hosted by manufacturers or the third part for the purpose of benefiting from group innovation actions. The members have common interest on product innovations and sharing innovative ideas with each other, even build up online or offline personal relationships. Focusing on the internet-based user innovation community, this paper put forward a theoretical based on the the self-concept-based motivation model to explain the customer's participation behavior in the user innovation community. Using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method, data analysis showed that all of the research hypotheses were supported. Based on our analysis, we can find out that users will participate in the internet-based innovation community when they perceive this as a channel to gain happiness, demonstrate their ability level, and attain the feeling of belonging to.