The Influence of Motivation and Social Capital to Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities: Study on Female Daily Online Community

One of the technological developments that changed the pattern of communication and traditional marketing is social media. Social media can be a more effective promotional tools where promotion is not only done by the company as the main source of communication of a brand, but the consumer can act as a marketing or public relation for the company. One of the social media that can be utilized by marketers or companies is the online community. In the online community like Female Daily, the content created by users or community members involves different topics, including brands and products where members share their knowledge and experience, they also have discussion about their common interests and likes. However, the greatest challenge in fostering an online community is the provision of knowledge, the willingness of individual knowledge sharing with other members. This study investigates the factors that motivate knowledge sharing within the online community. This study uses the theory of individual motivation and social capital theory, because knowledge sharing in the online community is a social process that involves personal interaction among members, the perspective of individual psychology and sociology will be able to explain more about this behavior. Motivation is divided into two, namely intrinsic motivation (enjoyment in helping others) and extrinsic motivation (rewards and reputation), while Social Capital consists of structural capital (social interaction), relational capital (identification, trust, reciprocity), and cognitive capital (shared language and shared vision), to the knowledge sharing of online community members. This study found that enjoyment in helping others, reputation, social interaction, trust, reciprocity, and shared language influence knowledge sharing, but this study finds interesting findings where rewards, identification, and shared vision do not affect knowledge sharing. The results of this study will help identify the motivations underlying the knowledge sharing behavior of individuals in the online community.