User adoption of a hybrid social tagging approach in an online knowledge community
| Published date | 18 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-09-2018-0212 |
| Date | 18 March 2019 |
| Pages | 155-175 |
| Author | Chunxiu Qin,Yaxi Liu,Jian Mou,Jiangping Chen |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
User adoption of a hybrid social
tagging approach in an online
knowledge community
Chunxiu Qin, Yaxi Liu and Jian Mou
School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Xian, China, and
Jiangping Chen
Department of Information Science,
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Online knowledge communities make great contributions to global knowledge sharing and
innovation. Resource tagging approaches have been widely adopted in such communities to describe,
annotate and organize knowledge resources mainly through users’participation. However, it is unclear what
causes the adoption of a particular resource tagging approach. The purpose of this paper is to identify factors
that drive users to use a hybrid social tagging approach.
Design/methodology/approach –Technology acceptance model and social cognitive theory are adopted
to support an integrated model proposed in this paper. Zhihu, one of the most popular online knowledge
communities in China, is taken as the survey context. A survey was conducted with a questionnaire and
collected data were analyzed through structural equation model.
Findings –A new hybrid social resource tagging approach was refined and described. The empirical results
revealed that self-efficacy, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use exert positive effect on users’
attitude. Moreover, social influence, PU and attitude impact significantly on users’intention to use a hybrid
social resource tagging approach.
Originality/value –Theoretically, this study enriches the type of resource tagging approaches and
recognizes factors influencing user adoption to use it. Regarding the practical parts, the results provide online
information system providers and designers with referential strategies to improve the performance of the
current tagging approaches and promote them.
Keywords Social cognitive theory, Technology acceptance model, Social tagging,
A hybrid social tagging approach, Online knowledge organization, User adoption
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
To publish or share knowledge resources on the internet, platforms based on Web 2.0 are
getting more and more popular (Alqahtani, 2017). As one of the most typical applications
of Web 2.0, online knowledge communities (e.g. Wikipedia and Zhihu) have become an
efficient place for users to acquire and share knowledge. The online knowledge
community refers to a group of individuals with common interests, goals or practices who
participate in the knowledge sharing and social interactions through the internet, such as
BBS and online forums (Ye et al., 2015). Currently, these knowledge communities have
become a huge dynamic knowledge repository for global knowledge sharing and
knowledge innovation that allows knowledge resources to be reconfigured. Users’
participation in these communities is critical and creates potential value (Cao and Wang,
2018). Users are not only the knowledge producers and seekers, but also the organizers
and managers of knowledge resources.
To provide users withefficient acquisition and discoveryof knowledge resources, current
online knowledge communities use different social tagging approaches to develop their
tagging systems (Laniado et al., 2007; Ohkura et al., 2006). On the one hand, these resource
tagging approaches allow the assimilationof “t he wisdom of the crowd.”Through a series of
operations, such as creating a tag and using it for tagging, users can describe and annotate
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 2, 2019
pp. 155-175
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-09-2018-0212
Received 7 September 2018
Revised 19 December 2018
23 January 2019
Accepted 28 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
155
User adoption
of a hybrid
social tagging
approach
community resources, which are more conducive to knowledge acquisition and discovery
(Huang et al., 2012). In other words, these resource tagging approaches rely on users’
participation to implement the functionality of knowledge organization and management.
Thus, whether users use these tagging approaches or not affects the effectiveness of
knowledge discovery and sharing in online communities. On the other hand, if users are
unsatisfied with the social tagging approach for certain reasons, they might stop using it.
In that case, users no longer play the role of the organizers and managers of knowledge
resources. This would lead to resources in this online community not being effectively
described and annotated, which would cause low efficiency of knowledge discovery and
sharing. Userswho act as knowledge seekerswould be unsatisfied with theonline community
and might leavethis community at any time due to considerably low switchingcosts in online
environments(Kang, 2018). This would cause a great loss.Therefore, the success of an online
system relies largely on its users’adoption (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989; Yen et al., 2010).
Only by identifying the key factors that affect users’behavioral intention and developing
corresponding strategies can truly promote users to adopt these tagging approaches.
Moreover, as specific tagging systems are developed based on social tagging approaches,
exploring factors that influence user adoption of the tagging approaches might also help
design more efficient tagging systems. Hence, it is of great significance to explore user
adoption of social tagging approaches in online knowledge communities. However, in the
social tagging field, previous studies mainly lay emphasis on developing tagging models
(Mika, 2005; Gruber,2008), and designing tagging systemsbased on approaches to combining
folksonomy and taxonomy (Hayman and Lothian, 2007; Lemieux, 2009; Tsui et al., 2010).
There is little research in user adoption of current tagging approaches.
The purpose of this study is to identify factors that lead to the successful adoption of
a tagging approachthrough an empirical investigation. Our researchmade several theoretical
and practical contributions to online knowledge management systems. First, a new hybrid
social taggingapproach was refined and described forthe first time, which enriches methods
for online knowledge organization. Second, our study applied the technology acceptance
model (TAM) and socialcognitive theory (SCT) to explore user behavior intention (BI), which
extended these two theories into the context of online knowledge organization. Third, it fills
the gap in user adoption of social tagging approaches, which has rarely been examined in
previous studies. Additionally, future research can be built on the factors identified in this
study to explore more effective resource organization strategies for online knowledge
communities. Finally, it can provide recommended strategies to the system providers and
designers to improve existing tagging approaches and the construction of new ones.
In conclusion, our investigation of user adoption of a hybrid social tagging approach will
promote resourcedescription and annotation,information organizationand management, and
knowledge discovery and innovation.
To empirically verify the relationships between relevant factors and BI, we use structural
equation model (SEM) with data from Zhihu users in China. Assumptions have been made
that TAM and SCT both account for a considerable proportion of the variance in user
adoption of a hybrid social tagging approach. Hence, we propose a conceptual model by
synthesizing TAM and SCT. Specifically, we take a keen interest in the relevant effect on BI
of TAM’s perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), attitude (ATT)
constructs and SCT’s self-efficacy (SE), social influence (SI) constructs. On the basis of those
factors, we aim to address the following research question:
RQ1. What factors derived from TAM and SCT may drive an individual to use a hybrid
social tagging approach?
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. A new hybrid social tagging approach
is refined and introduced at first. Then, we present our theoretical background and
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