Examining the factors influencing elders’ knowledge sharing behavior in virtual communities

Abstract

The development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) reduces the cost of communication, and the emergence of a large number of virtual communities to promote more frequent knowledge sharing behavior. However, there are still great differences in knowledge sharing behavior among different age groups in virtual communities. Through long-term observation we found that whether it is a large virtual community, such as WeChat, micro-blog, Zhihu et al., or a virtual community which is designed for the elderly, such as The lovely old man, The home of old man, Sunset Forum et al., the old people’s participation and enthusiasm for knowledge sharing are not high in China. The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivation of the elderly to participate in knowledge sharing in virtual communities. We select participants through various virtual communities, and using the grounded theory to carry out conceptual analysis and coding. To understand the motivation of the elderly to participate in knowledge sharing in the virtual community, so as to provide some reference for the development of the elderly human resources.