Fostering cooperation on the Internet: social exchange processes in innovative virtual consumer communities

Virtual communities of consumers increasingly engage in voluntary collaborative production of digital goods and services which became highly successful in recent years. This paper offers a theoretical conceptualization and empirical evidence of the key elements and processes of exchange in those communities. Within a culture of gift-giving and generalized social exchange, knowledge as the main resource of the community is multiplied by giving it away freely to others and thus, fosters contribution behavior. Friendship, peer reputation and external feed-back provided by a global user community represent highly motivating social rewards which, combined with individual gain of knowledge, constitute a self-sustaining system of exchange.