How Does Online Brand Community Climate Influence Community Identification? The Mediation of Social Capital

Although online communities with a supportive climate encourage members to participate and exchange their information openly and freely, participants may perceive the community to be unsafe without proper control. Do controlling climates also contribute to the accumulation of social capital in online brand communities (OBCs)? The purpose of our study was to investigate how controlling and supportive climates jointly influence community identification, and to examine the mediating effects of social capital and the moderating effects of community age. A conceptual framework was proposed and tested with data collected from an online survey of 481 online brand community members. We found that both controlling and supportive climates had positive effects on social capital (trust and norms of reciprocity), which exerted a partial mediation between community climate and community identification in the OBCs examined. Developing a community climate was particularly effective in generating trust in older communities. This research contributes to the community literature and has important implications for community climate management. We identified the boundary conditions of the community climate-trust association.