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Empathy and trust: Understanding the emotional and social aspects of knowledge sharing in online communities

Resource type
Thesis type
(Thesis) Ph.D.
Date created
2023-05-12
Authors/Contributors
Author: Wang, Tao
Abstract
This research explores the efficacy of knowledge sharing in online communities and emphasizes the role of empathy and trust in shaping social interactions. It presents three studies that examine the impact of emotional distress and empathy on knowledge sharing, the determination of effort in knowledge sharing, and the emergence of interpersonal trust in social messaging groups, using multiple theories from social psychology. The data is collected from the logs of an online forum on Reddit, a social messaging group on Wechat, and a survey. This research contributes to the literature on empathy and the theory of emotion as social information as well as self-determination theory. Additionally, it introduces and integrates multiple computational linguistic techniques to measure emotions and social relationships. Overall, it deepens the understanding of the micro-foundations of knowledge exchange in online communities and offers practical implications for building and managing such communities.
Document
Extent
172 pages.
Identifier
etd22519
Copyright statement
Copyright is held by the author(s).
Permissions
This thesis may be printed or downloaded for non-commercial research and scholarly purposes.
Supervisor or Senior Supervisor
Thesis advisor: Soh, Pek-Hooi
Language
English
Member of collection
Download file Size
etd22519.pdf 4.39 MB

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