Person-environment fit, commitment, and customer contribution in online brand community: A nonlinear model

Online brand community is often regarded as a value co-creation platform where customers’ active contributions are most important to the success of the community. Previous studies on the potential drivers of users’ contributions placed a great emphasis on either users or the community itself, and most of these studies primarily focused on linear relationships. Drawing upon person-environment fit theory, this study develops a research model to explore the nonlinear effects of person-environment fit, i.e., needs-supplies fit and demands-abilities fit, on community commitment, as well as the nonlinear effect of community commitment on users’ knowledge contribution intention. Using 480 online survey responses, the results indicate that needs-supplies fit has a decreasing incremental effect, while demands-abilities fit has an increasing incremental effect on community commitment. Community commitment has an increasing incremental effect on willingness to contribute. Implications for both research and practice are also discussed.