온라인 커뮤니티의 페널티가 웹사이트 회원의 멤버십 유지에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Online communities started as a place where Internet users share information, resources, and various opinions. Since the popularization of Internet, there appeared countless such communities, while the websites offered by some of them achieved visible progress. When the online community is considered one of the most representative model businesses in the Internet industry, researches in the field of business have been concentrating on the subject of profit making. On the other hand, researches in sociology, psychology and ethics are gradually focusing on the negative aspects of Internet. This paper examines on the existing researches on online communities and negative aspects of such communities. Also, focusing on researches on the social and legal regulations on online communities, it examines how the internal and external penalties can influence on the matter of sustenance in the membership. While this paper focuses on researches on the subject of customer commitment, which serves as a key to the membership sustenance, it also examines how internal and external penalties on members influence on the sustenance of membership. This paper relies both on literatures and an original survey. First, the literatures used here mostly focused on the subject of the online community and customer loyalty, and the negative aspects of Internet and the regulation on its illegal applications. Second, questionnaires for users of online communities were used to provide proofs to serve this thesis. The result of questionnaires shows that the lighter the penalties are, the easier it becomes to sustain members. It also proves that, when charged with a penalty with the same kind, members with higher commitment tend to keep their membership while the ones with lower commitment tend to leave. While cyber crimes and other negative aspects of Internet are gradually highlighted, activities of giving penalty are to increase. Unlike conventional ones, regulations on Internet emphasize autonomy of the charged persons. As noted in existing researches, members appear to be more accepting to online penalties that are defined internally and autonomously than they are to legal regulations. Thus, in dealing with illegal or unhealthy member activities, it is very important for the owners of online communities to form autonomous censorship and regulations by effectively communicating with members, rather than to seek governmental or administrational regulations.