What Makes a Helpful Knowledge Contribution in Online Communities? A Heuristic-Systematic Model

Online knowledge communities have revolutionized the way knowledge is exchanged through the Internet. Usefulness voting plays an important role in online knowledge exchange, because it facilitates the assessment of knowledge quality by involving a potentially large pool of experts in casting votes on knowledge contribution submitted to the community. Informed by the theoretical framework of systematic-heuristic model, this research proposes a research model to explain how content cues (including informativeness, relevance, diversity, and media richness) and source credibility cue (contributor reputation) affect usefulness voting of knowledge contribution by online peers. This study not only provides a nuanced understanding of the effects of content and source credibility cues of knowledge contribution on usefulness voting, but also provides practical implications for developers and managers to develop or implement information system design features and policies that can better support problem solving by exchanging high quality user-generated content in online communities.