| Chapter : | Introduction |
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Scholars studying virtual communities have been overly optimistic about the success of creating and maintaining the computer-mediated social groups, even when most virtual communities suffer from the suboptimal situation in which most members in the group free ride except for a few dedicated contributors. Because of this neglect of the individual-collectivity tension, communication researchers have portrayed consumer word of mouth (WOM) and diffusion as a conflict-free process in which microinteractions among individuals translate into macroscale outcomes without a problem (Bonacich, 1990).
How can the problematic situation be resolved? Social dilemma researchers have found that the dilemmatic situation commonly results from the two characteristics of public goods—nonexcludability and jointness of supply (Komorita & Parks, 1996). Nonexcludability, first, means that no one can be excluded from the benefit of public goods once these goods are provided. In a virtual community, the information provided by a person can be accessed and used by anyone within the community regardless of not making contributions. Second, jointness of supply means that an individual’s consumption of a public good does not reduce the proportion for others’ consumption. Because the amount of utility that consumers can obtain remains the same, this implies that an individual’s exploitative behavior does not cause direct conflicts with others. Due to this incentive structure, an individual may be easily tempted to behave exploitatively, lurking behind the contributions of others.
As a solution to the free rider problem in virtual communities, this research proposes to transform a public communication space into a network of multiple private spaces. Social exchange theorists have suggested that actors’ motivation to cooperate or defect is contingent on the structure of resource exchange given (Emerson, 1976).