Study of Influencing Factors on Users' Knowledge Contribution Behaviors in Social Q & A Communities

Social Q&A communities are important platforms for knowledge sharing among online users nowadays. Therefore, it is of theoretical and practical significance to understand the motivations behind users' knowledge contribution behaviors in social Q&A communities. Drawing on a dataset from Stack Overflow, one of the largest Q&A sites worldwide, this paper aims to explore the factors that may influence users' knowledge contribution behaviors. In particular, we examined factors related to three aspects: social interactivity, social capital and questions readability. Based on related theories we proposed several hypothesis and then tested these hypothesis using an econometric model. Our research results established the relationship between user's knowledge contribution behaviors and factors related to social interactivity, social capital and questions readability. This paper contributes to literature related to studies on Social Q&A communities.