Understanding dark side of online community engagement

Abstract

This study examines the dark side of online communities, especially barriers to customer engagement in online communities. A total of 301 responses from online community members were collected to examine the proposed hypotheses based on the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT). The study also examines the mediating effect of negative anticipated emotions and moderating effect of association tenure and customer prior attitude. The findings suggest that performance, information overload, and social recognition barriers positively impact the users’ disengagement intention towards the online community. The negative anticipated emotions mediate the association between barriers and customer disengagement. Also, tenure was found to be a crucial moderator. The study contributes to the dark side of online community literature and suggests marketers how to reduce customer disengagement in online communities.