Understanding community citizenship behavior in social networking sites. An extension of the social identification theory
| Pages | 1752-1772 |
| Date | 19 October 2015 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2015-0211 |
| Published date | 19 October 2015 |
| Author | Li-Chun Hsu,Wen-Hai Chih,Dah-Kwei Liou |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems |
REGULAR PAPER
Understanding community
citizenship behavior in social
networking sites
An extension of the social
identification theory
Li-Chun Hsu
Department of Leisure and Recreation Management,
Da-Yeh University, Changhua, Taiwan
Wen-Hai Chih
Department of Business Administration,
National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan, and
Dah-Kwei Liou
Department of Finance, Chihlee University of Technology,
New Taipei City, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose –Social media platforms established social relationship between the consumer and the brand
community. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to understand how dual-identification
impact on the community citizenship behavior (CCB). Specifically, the authors propose perceived
community-brand similarity (PCBS) influence CCB via dual-identification and brand passion (BP).
Design/methodology/approach –The research sample consists of 323 members who have used
Apple product and used Apple fan page for more than one year, and structural equation modeling was
used to test the research hypotheses.
Findings –The results indicated that PCBS directly influenced brand identification (BI) and
community identification (CI), respectively. BI directly influenced CI. CI directly influenced BP, but BI
not directly influenced BP. In the mediation effects, both the dual-identification factors and BP play
important mediating roles.
Practical implications –From a managerial standpoint, this research provides implications for
social network sites management.
Originality/value –This research fills a void in the BI and CI are coexisting but distinct aspects of
virtual communities. In addition, the mediating role of dual-identification factors and BP in the online
community consumer-brand relationship has not been fully investigated.
Keywords Social identity theory, Brand fan page, Brand passion, Community citizenship behaviour,
Perceived community-brand similarity
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Contemporary marketing literature focussed on social media platforms, which used to
maintain the relationships between consumers and brands (Kim and Ko, 2012; Laroche
et al., 2012; Schau et al., 2009). Among 1.5 billion social media users, 55 percent of those who
follow brands through brand fan pages (Inside Consulting, 2012) to establish relationships
between themselves and the brands (Belleghem et al., 2011). This trend shows that social
media substantially influences consumer decision-making processes. Therefore, numerous
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 115 No. 9, 2015
pp. 1752-1772
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-05-2015-0211
Received 27 May 2015
Revised 8 July 2015
12 August 2015
Accepted 15 August 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
1752
IMDS
115,9
enterprises have managed consumer relationships by using brand fan pages (Laroche
et al., 2013). Recent studies of consumer identification, which have become the core theory
for understanding the management of customer relationship. The mainstream of the
literature can be divided into two parts, including interpretative/sociological approaches
and psychological approaches. Though sociology explained the structural development
of the identification process, psychology focussed on the exploration of appropriate
procedure on personal level (Hsu, 2012; Ravasi and van Rekom, 2003).
From the perspective of social identity theory (SIT), consumers generated
pro-brandbehaviorsbasedontheirbrandrelationships because of their identification
with focal brands or companies (He et al., 2011). Hence, SIT was adopted to
examineonlinecommunities,exploringhow virtual brand communities affected
brand relationships (Zhou, 2011), and clarifying the substantial influences that
virtual community member interactions exerted on brands. Community research
tended to analyze single identification concepts (He et al., 2011; Zhou, 2011);
ignoring that brand identification (BI) and community identification (CI) coexisted
with distinct aspects of virtual communities. Certain studies only considered BI from
a single perspective (Becerra and Badrinarayanan, 2013; Kuenzel and Halliday, 2010;
Tuškej et al., 2013), whereas others only adopted CI perspectives (Algesheimer et al.,
2005; Chang et al., 2013; Huang, 2012). Although recent studies have acknowledged
that BI and CI phenomena occur in communities, they have failed to investigate
the context of BI and CI. Previous studies could not clearly explain the formation of
personal motives to produce the intermediary mental process of decision-making behavior
for community members. This study bridged this gap. Thus, this study argued that brand
community studies should distinguish BI and CI, which were not parallel concepts; rather,
BI both yielded and served as the antecedent for CI.
This research proposed two research standpoints based on the foundation of SIT.
First, regarding exogenous factor, researchers reported that perceived community-
brand similarity (PCBS) influenced the sense of belonging (Stokburger-Sauer et al.,
2012; Tuškej et al., 2013), attitudes, and loyalty toward brands (Kressman et al., 2006;
Sirgy et al., 2008). Social interactions among virtual community members may influence
the relationships among consumers and brands (Veloutsou and Moutinho, 2009).
Organizational behavior researchers recognized that members of homogeneous
organizations tended to develop high levels of organizational identification (Ashforth
and Mael, 1989). When people possessed similar characteristics, they were willing to
communicate with and trust each other, forming relationships (Lazarsfeld and Merton,
1954); however, the prerequisites of CI were rarely discussed (Casaló et al., 2013; Hsu
et al., 2012; Scarpi, 2010; Tsai et al., 2012). Thus, this research investigated how PCBS
influenced BI and CI, respectively.
Second, regarding socio-psychological factors, in addition to SIT, it should consider
the brand-induced emotional reactions of consumers. The consumer-brand
relationships of previou s studies focussed on brand trust (e.g. Becerra and
Badrinarayanan, 2013; Schallehn et al., 2014) and brand attitude factors (Keng et al.,
2014). A critical aspect of consumer-brand relationships is that when consumers hold
positive and excited feelings toward brands, they can form close emotional connections
to those brands. When consumers became obsessed, they were eager to maintain long-
term relationships with brands (Albert et al., 2013) and tended to provide positive
recommendations and word of mouth for their favored brands. Thus, the brand passio n
(BP) of community members can be a key mediator between identification factors and
community citizenship behavior (CCB).
1753
Understanding
CCB in social
networking
sites
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