Investigating the Effect of Social Ties on Knowledge-Sharing Behavior

Abstract

The study considers the community question and answer (CQA) site as a communication platform that brings together people from across the globe to exchange knowledge. This study examined the communication patterns on a CQA website. It explored how users' behavior of donating or collecting knowledge is affected by their generational age, social capital, and the technological features of the online platform. The researcher used social network analysis to measure the structural communication patterns of participants in Stack Overflow's public and private groups Also, it employed a survey method to gather respondents' perceptions towards knowledge donating or collecting in knowledge-sharing sites where participants have non-pre-existing offline and pre-existing offline ties. The study found that the big world network structure of a public Stackoverflow, in contrast to its private group's small world network structure, exhibits a participation inequality among its members. The presence of one active member and less participation among others is present both in knowledge donating and knowledge collecting activity, whether it may be with pre-existing offline social ties before engagement or not. The research also found that digital immigrants and native respondents are open to participating in a CQA site regardless of social ties. This study confirms that said respondents perceived the system's usability- navigability, responsiveness, interactivity, and security typically influence their intent to use a CQA.