Does Personality Matter for Contributions to Online Communities?

Many high-technology business models would not be scalable and profitable without online communities that provide user support, foster technology adoption, offer product feedback, solve technical problems, and to co-develop products. However, only a relatively small number of all community members are actively contributing content and their attention is increasingly divided between a rapidly growing number of personal and professional online communities. Companies therefore strive to convert "lurkers", who observe the community, into active content providers. This paper investigates to what extent this is possible across different community members. Specifically, it asks how personality traits impact online behavior. To this end, the paper develops a research framework for online participation that is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Big-Five personality factors and outlines future research directions.