Management Information Systems Commons^™

The Role Of The Sense Of Community In The Sustainability Of Social Network Sites, Stanislav Mamonov, Marios Koufaris, Raquel Benbunan-Fich

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

ABSTRACT: The evolution of information technologies enables new forms of communication and facilitates the emergence of different types of virtual communities, such as social networks. While some social network services have succeeded, others have failed. Understanding the factors that affect the sustainability of social network sites is important for both research and practice. We draw on the sense of community theory to develop a nomological framework of antecedents and consequences associated with sense of community in social network sites. We evaluate the framework with a survey of 506 Facebook users. We find that sense of community has a strong effect …