基于成员自我展示的虚拟社区自运行机制——自我展示的效用及其对社会认同的影响

The Self-running Mechanism of Virtual Communities Based on Members' Self-presentation

虚拟社区中的自我展示已经成为人们日常生活不可缺少的部分。由于匿名性,自我展示充满了个性化。从自我展示的数量和个性化两个角度,分析和检验自我展示产生的社会和心理效用,以及以社会和心理效用为中介,自我展示对社会认同的影响。为评价理论模型,进行了问卷调研,共收到351份有效问卷。数据分析显示,自我展示可以直接产生的社会和心理效用包括:社会互动联结、自尊和独特感。通过这些效用的中介作用,自我展示可以促进社会认同的形成。以前的研究,分别用自我归类和社会归属表示社会认同。本文中,社会认同是指社会归属,可以满足人们的归属需求。本文所构建的理论模型反映了虚拟社区的自运行机制,具有重要的理论和实践意义。

Self-presentation is the major form of members＇ participations in virtual communities, but there is little research about the roles which self-presentation plays in virtual communities. Because of anonymity, participants Voice various opinions rather than conform to others in virtual communities, and thus the self-presentation is more individual. This study constructs a research model, aiming to find the social and psychological effects which self-presentation plays in virtual communities, and the influence of self-presentation on social identity. In order to test the research model and hypotheses, we conducted a survey. The collection of data lasted one month and a total of 351 valid questionnaires were collected. This study indicates that self-presentation can directly produce three social and psychology utilities： social interaction tie, membership esteem, sense of uniqueness, and based on these three utilities＇ mediating effects, indirectly produce another important social or psychological utility： social identity. Based on the analysis of literature, we found, in previous studies on the formation of social identity, social identity were respectively embodied as two distinct forms： self-categorization and social identification. This study also has several managerial implications to the virtual community operators, because it describes the self-running mechanism of virtual communities.