The Mixed Effects of Participant Diversity and Expressive Freedom in Online Peer-to-Peer Problem Solving Communities
研究了在线同伴问题解决社区中，感知多样性和表达自由如何影响参与者的学习和社会认同，进而影响其与品牌的关系和未来意向。基于巴西XBOX社区555名成员的调查数据，发现多样性促进学习但阻碍社会认同，表达自由促进学习但对社会认同无影响。
Online peer-to-peer problem solving (P3) communities provide a cost-effective and reliable means of delivering education and service support to customers of complex, frequently evolving products. Through a multi-disciplinary conceptual framework, we examine the roles of diversity perceptions and expressive freedom in affecting learning and social identification of online P3 community participants, and in turn, their effects on the participants’ relationship with, and future intentions towards the brand. We test our hypotheses via a structural equation model with survey data obtained from 555 active members of the two largest XBOX online P3 communities in Brazil. Our results reveal that greater perceived diversity facilitates learning but hinders social identification, whereas expressive freedom has positive effects on learning, but no effect on social identification. Social identification fully mediates the effects of the antecedents on outcomes. We also discuss the theoretical contributions and the managerial implications of our findings, and suggest opportunities for future research.