The impact of a sense of virtual community on online community: does online privacy concern matter?

The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural relationships between a sense of virtual community (SOVC), community satisfaction, community involvement, community commitment and alternative attractiveness in the online fan community context.

This study gathered and empirically analyzed data from 277 members of the online Super Junior fan community with frequency, reliability, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20.0 and AMOS 24.0.

The findings of SEM indicated that community satisfaction was significantly influenced by the four dimensions of SOVC, while community involvement was significantly affected by membership and fulfillment of needs. Also, community commitment and alternative attractiveness were significantly impacted by community satisfaction and community involvement. Lastly, privacy concern moderated the paths from influence to community satisfaction and from community satisfaction to community commitment, respectively.

The findings of this study should help online fan community administrators to reduce members' perception of alternative attractiveness (other fan communities) and to understand how privacy concern influences members' attitudes toward the online community.

In light of the findings, a greater understanding of the determinants of community commitment and alternative attractiveness along with privacy concern is critical in retaining virtual fan communities' members over the long-term.