Influences of Place Attachment and Social Media Af

Information Systems and e-Business Management (2021) 19:459–493
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-019-00418-7
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Influences of place attachment and social media

affordances on online brand community continuance
Kai Wang1 · Jeffrey C. F. Tai2 · Hsin‑Lu Chang3
Received: 31 May 2018 / Revised: 9 October 2018 / Accepted: 20 January 2019 / Published online: 30 July 2019
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract
The emergence and rapid development of social media have brought customers to
become an indispensable part of brand activities through conversation and co-cre-
ation with the brand. Factors affecting customers’ intentions to continually partici-
pate in online brand communities thus present a research opportunity to be explored.
From the contextual and instrumental viewpoints, this study examines the effects of
place attachment and social media affordances on online brand community continu-
ance and the mediating roles of service experience and brand engagement. A model
with seven hypotheses is tested using a sample of 231 online survey respondents.
The PLS analysis shows that both service experience and brand engagement have
positive influences on continuance intention. Also, the proposed impact of place
attachment and social media affordances on service experience and brand engage-
ment are partially supported. The results indicate that placement attachment and
social media affordances indirectly drive users to continually participate in online
brand communities through improving their service experience and brand engage-
ment. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.
Keywords Online brand community · Service experience · Brand engagement ·

Place attachment · Social media affordances · Continuance intention
* Jeffrey C. F. Tai
jeffreycftai@mail.ncyu.edu.tw
Kai Wang
kwang@nuk.edu.tw
Hsin‑Lu Chang
hchang@mis.nccu.edu.tw
1
Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
2
Department of Management Information Systems, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan
3
Department of Management Information Systems, National Chengchi University, Taipei,
Taiwan
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

460 K. Wang et al.
1 Introduction
Brand communities not only enhance customer experience but also help in build-
ing a closer relationship among brands, suppliers, and customers (Algesheimer
et al. 2005; McAlexander et al. 2002). According to Marketing Insider Group
(2018), 67% of businesses use their brand communities for insights on new
products or services. Service experience is especially important because online
brand communities are not only a technology platform that provides utilitarian or
hedonic value to its members but also a service tool to maintain close relationship
between brands and customers to co-create value through continual participation.
A report from Social Media Today (2017) shows that customers spend 20 to 40%
more when companies respond to customer requests over online brand communi-
ties. In addition, a possible outcome of positive service experience is increased
brand engagement, which facilitates customers to continuously perform co-crea-
tion activities (e.g., social word-of-mouth) (Brodie et al. 2011, 2013; Zhang et al.
2017). A research by Aberdeen (2017) also indicated that companies using brand
communities to deliver customer service enjoy an 81% greater annual increase
in revenue from customer referrals than non-users. Because service experience
and brand engagement have been neglected in past research on technology adop-
tion and continuance (Kim et al. 2007), this study posits that these two factors
represent pivotal determinants of users’ continuance intentions in online brand
communities.
Following the logic above, one question emerges: What are the antecedents
that determine the quality of users’ service experience and brand engagement
in online brand communities? Different from other online communities, online
brand communities are built around commercialized products or services shared
by community members (Jang et al. 2008; Muniz and O’Guinn 2001). The com-
pany that owns the brand hosts the community, and thus has the advantages of
monitoring and controlling customer experience by tailor making the community
place and providing different tools for strengthening users’ experience and rela-
tionship. Because online brand community can be seen as a place as well as a tool
for companies to enhance users’ experience and engagement, we draw on both
contextual and instrumental perspectives to specify possible antecedents. The
contextual perspective stresses the meaning online brand communities have for
its participants, while the instrumental perspective focuses on how social media
are used to expand and deepen the influence of online brand communities. As a
result, place attachment and social media affordances are identified in this study
as determinants of users’ service experience and brand engagement in online
brand communities.
The concept of place attachment originated from environmental psychol-
ogy research. Through a series of events, content sharing, and interactions hap-
pening in the community, participants would endow the space with value. Such
interactional process turns the abstract space into a meaningful place and leads
to personal experiences (Goel et al. 2011) and emotional connections (Hernán-
deza et al. 2007; Hidalgo and Hernández 2001) deeply attached to that place. It
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Influences of place attachment and social media affordances… 461
is through place attachment that online brand communities justify their mean-
ing and value and thus create unique experiential value and customer engagement
during the interactional process.
Social media affordances represent the instrumental characteristics of the media
platform that brands utilize for online brand communities. Treem and Leonardi
(2012) pointed out that visibility, persistence, editability, and association, hereafter
termed “social media affordances,” are four salient technological properties of social
media that afford users to perform communicative actions. Treem and Leonardi also
suggested that social media affordances can enable collaborative interactions (e.g.,
knowledge sharing) in online communities. This research thus intends to examine
the link between social media affordances and service experiences as well as brand
engagement.
Customers have become an indispensable part of brand activities through con-
versation and co-creation with the brand. Therefore, how place attachment and
social media affordances affect customers’ intentions for continual participation in
online brand communities presents a research opportunity to be explored as well as
a research gap to be filled. In addition, the mediating role of service experience and
brand engagement will be addressed in order to build a more holistic picture of cus-
tomers’ participation behavior in online brand communities.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a con-
densed literature review on our major research constructs. Section 3 develops a
research model with seven research hypotheses. Section 4 describes research meth-
ods regarding data collection and measurement development, followed by data anal-
ysis and findings in Sect. 5. Section 6 discusses research findings and theoretical as
well as managerial implications of this study. Lastly, Sect. 7 concludes this paper
with limitations and future research directions.
2 Theoretical foundation and literature review
2.1 Place attachment theory
Place attachment is one’s emotional connection with a place (Hidalgo and Hernán-
dez 2001) and requires one’s experience of social interaction with that place (Rubin-
stein and Parmelee 1992). Interaction refers to how things existing and occurring in
the place influence people in it (Goel et al. 2011). Being aware of the environment
through sensory inputs, one attends to informational inputs and attaches meanings
by engaging with selective sensory inputs. Such interaction leads to positive emo-
tional connection with the place (Tuan 1977).
Sense of place emerges when one can distinguish one place from the other or
describe the characteristics pertaining to a particular place (Relph 1976). Sense of
place develops into place attachment along three stages. In the first stage, sense of
place emerges through one’s contact with the place. In the second stage, identifi-
cation to a place either intensifies through insideness or weakens because of out-
sideness. In the third stage, intensified identification with the place generates place
13
462 K. Wang et al.
attachment, whereas weakened identification leads to place detachment (Relph

1976).
Adopting placement attachment as the theoretical account, Goel et al. (2011)
found that social awareness, location awareness, and task awareness determine
users’ extent of cognitive absorption in the virtual world and in turn their intentions
for returning. Social awareness is defined as “the perception a person has that she
and others in the same space find it easy to understand and interact in a social sense”
(p. 753). It means that when an interaction is underway in the online brand com-
munity, one can be aware whether other users are available for socially accepted
interactions. Location awareness regards the features of a virtual environment in
which users are aware of where he or she is in relation to objects in the environment
(Baecker et al. 1993; Goel et al. 2011). Task awareness is defined as “the perception
a person has about what she is to do based on instructions, tools, or the actions of
others in a given shared space” (p. 753).
This study contends that to make members feel attached to an online brand com-
munity, brand companies need to let members know what the community is for
(connection with the brand), feel the warmth and vitality of the interactions, and
be assured that problems regarding the products and services can be solved effec-
tively. Although brand communities exist in the virtual environment, activities,
interactions, and information sharing happening in the communities make brand
communities a right candidate for being “a meaningful place” for its members. This
research thus draws on the place attachment theory to investigate the influence of
place attachment on brand community continuance intention, through the mediation
of experience and brand engagement.
2.2 Social media affordances
The concept of affordances can be traced back to the studies of Gibson (1977, 1979).
As indicated by Treem and Leonardi (2012), “[a]ffordances are unique to the par-
ticular ways in which an actor, or a set of actors, perceives and uses the object” (p.
145). Norman (1990) regarded affordances as the perceived and actual properties of
an object, suggesting how the object could possibly be used. According to Norman
(1990), affordances provide cues for possible usage of objects, and the very basic
features of an object determine how the object could be used.
Research on affordances provides a different view, in contrast to the traditional
functional and quality features, for researchers to investigate the influence of new
technologies. An example of the new technology under investigation is social media,
which has created new ways of connection, collaboration, and innovation with cus-
tomers (Cisco 2010; Dunn 2010; Wilson et al. 2011).
The four social media affordances proposed by Treem and Leonardi (2012),
namely visibility, persistence, association, and editability, have been widely adopted
by social media researchers. Social media improves the visibility of online behav-
ior and information (Grudin 2006; Boyd 2010) and makes users’ posts, comments,
status updates, votes, friend networks, and pictures available to those who have
authorized access. Thus, social media users’ behavior, knowledge, preferences, and
13
connections become visible to others. Moreover, users are able to notice as well as
track status updates and ongoing activities related to specific brands they follow.
Persistence allows user-created content to be available and accessible to other
users, even when the original publisher is offline. Persistence is also known as
reviewability (Clark and Brennan 1991), recordability (Hancock et al. 2007), or per-
manence (Whittaker 2003). Because social media provides the possibility of perma-
nent access, content and conversations can be searched, browsed, replayed, anno-
tated, visualized, restructured, and recontextualized (Erickson and Kellogg 2000),
thus enabling communicative actions with lasting influences.
Editability retains user control over communicative content by allowing users to
create, modify, and reproduce content that they post in social media. Hence, the idea
of the editability affordance is similar to rehearsability (Dennis et al. 2008), allow-
ing social media users to conduct purposeful and accurate communication. Benefit-
ing from the editability affordance, social media users can be aware of how other
users react to their posts as well as comments and manipulate communicative con-
tent in response.
With the affordance of association, social media allows users to build connec-
tions with others and with content. Connection with other users can be established
through friending, following, or subscribing to others. Connection with content is
built through contributing, tagging or liking (or, for example, “+ 1” in Google+ and
“♡” in Instagram). Thus, the association affordance allows and supports users to
gain access to other users they have social connection with as well as to content they
associate with.
2.3 Service experience
In addition to the recreation values that traditional theme parks offer through enter-
tainment facilities, Disney Parks further create deeply immersing experiences that
link to visitors’ childhood memories. This demonstrates the value-in-use of Disney
Parks, in which unique service experiences engendered by the story context play a
pivotal role. This research thus intends to draw on the service-dominant logic per-
spective to investigate the influence of service experience on users’ continual par-
ticipation in online brand communities.
Prior studies have indicated service experience as the outcome of the memora-
ble process of co-creation between customers, service providers, and value crea-
tion partners (Kim et al. 2012; Pine and Gilmore 1999; Poulsson and Kale 2004).
Besides being memorable, service experience could occur at any conscious moment
in any given individual (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Poulsson and Kale 2004). Accord-
ing to Pine and Gilmore (1999), “the newly identified offering of experiences occurs
whenever a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as props
to engage an individual” (p. 10). Poulsson and Kale (2004) described commercial
experience as “an engaging act of co-creation between a provider and a consumer
wherein the consumer perceives value in the encounter and in the subsequent mem-
ory of that encounter” (p. 270). Hence, service experience is phenomenological in
nature (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Poulsson and Kale 2004; Vargo and Lusch 2008a,
13
464 K. Wang et al.
b). Wang (2015) further justified the mediating role of service experience in mobile
value-added service continuance when users play the dual roles of technology users
and service consumers. Therefore, this study includes service experience as one of
the determinants of users’ intentions for continually participating in online brand
communities.
2.4 Brand engagement
Engagement and involvement are commonly-adopted constructs for the study of

consumer intention and behavior (e.g., Hsieh and Chang 2016; Park et al. 2007).
In contrast to personal relevance that the notion of brand involvement underlines
(Rothschild 1984; Zaichkowsky 1985), brand engagement focuses on describing
customers’ psychological state that occurs as a result of their interactive experiences
with a focal brand (Brodie et al. 2013).
Brand engagement is a key issue in online brand community research because
increasing brand companies are expending significant efforts to expand and inten-
sify their influences through the online channel. The aim of these companies is to
enhance the value of brands, products, services, and experiences by turning custom-
ers into indispensable parts of brand activities (Füller et al. 2007; Nambisan and
Nambisan 2008). Therefore, researchers have further developed the notion of brand
engagement by considering how brand co-creation engagement leads to a strength-
ened consumer–brand relationship. For example, Hsieh and Chang (2016) defined
brand engagement as “a persistent, positive affective-motivational state of fulfill-
ment that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption toward brand co-cre-
ation” (p. 15).
Being conceptualized as a psychological state, brand engagement captures the
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of consumer–brand interactions,
including relevant cognitive processing, affection, and activation (Hollebeek et al.
2014). Researchers have also devoted to the measurement of brand engagement. For
example, Hollebeek et al.’s (2014) work suggested a three-dimensional structure,
which includes the subdimensions of cognitive processing, affection, and activation
to measure consumer brand engagement in social media. Other researchers such as
Erdoğmuş and Tatar (2015), Hollebeek (2011a, b), and Van Doorn et al. (2010) have
also proceeded with the multidimensional attempt to measure brand engagement.
Algesheimer et al. (2005) attempted to measure brand community engagement in
utilitarian, hedonic, and social aspects.
3 Research model and hypotheses
Drawing on the place attachment theory and social media affordances perspectives,
this research investigates whether and how service experience and brand engage-
ment mediate the influence of place attachment and social media affordances on
online brand community continuance. The model shown in Fig. 1 depicts the inte-
grative attempt and the associated research hypotheses.
13
Fig. 1 Research model
Brodie et al. (2011) defined customer engagement as “a psychological state,

which occurs by virtue of interactive customer experiences with a focal agent/
object within specific service relationships’’ (p. 258). Experiences are required
for engagement to occur in service relationships between a customer with a
focal object, and/or with other stakeholders (Hollebeek 2011a). Lusch and Vargo
(2010) also suggested that particular interactive, co-creative customer experi-
ences contribute to customers’ engaging acts. More specifically, interactive cus-
tomer experience is considered one of the underlying foundations of engagement
because “[e]ngagement… is based on the existence of focal interactive customer
experiences with specific engagement objects (e.g., a brand)” (Brodie et al. 2011,
p. 257).
Service experience captures participants’ positive experiences derived from
social interactions in the online brand community (Brodie et al. 2011; Malthouse
and Calder 2011; Mollen and Wilson 2010). When participants acquire positive and
desirable experiences of immersion, joyfulness, or surprise in an online brand com-
munity, they tend to engender deeper interest and favorable attitude toward the brand
associated with the community. They hence feel motivated to engage with the brand
in order to enjoy the similar experiences. Therefore, we propose H1 as follows:
H1 Service experience associated with an online brand community positively influ-
ences community participants’ brand engagement.
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466 K. Wang et al.
Optimal user experience plays an important role in forming satisfaction with

and continuance intention of IT (Deng et al. 2010). Favorable experience con-
tributes to positive satisfaction (Chang and Zhu 2012; Shin 2006; Zhou and Lu
2011), which in turn leads to continuance intention of IT (Bhattacherjee 2001;
Chea and Luo 2008; Hong et al. 2011; Teo et al. 2008). For example, prior stud-
ies have indicated that satisfied users have higher intention to continue using the
system or IT, whether it being portals or virtual learning systems (e.g., Lin 2012;
Van Riel et al. 2001). Furthermore, positive service experience enhances cus-
tomer loyalty and contributes to stronger willingness of customers to develop an
enduring relationship with the service provider (Pine and Gilmore 1999; Pullman
and Gross 2004). The phenomenological nature of service experience results in
customers’ unique and subjective interpretation of each experience (Wang 2015).
Users thus are willing to continue their relationships with the service provider to
continue enjoying the unique experiences (Vargo and Lusch 2008a, b).
In online brand communities, value co-creation activities contribute to favora-
ble service experiences. Such experiential value is phenomenologically experi-
enced within the online brand community, and members tend to have higher will-
ingness to stay with and continue participating in the community to acquire and
enjoy such unique experiences. We thus propose H2 as follows:
H2 Service experience associated with an online brand community positively influ-
ences community participants’ continuance intention.
Brand engagement in online brand communities refers to one’s positive brand-

related cognitive, emotional and behavioral activity during interactions with
the focal brand (Hollebeek et al. 2014). It reflects one’s discretionary invest-
ments of cognitive, affective, and behavioral resources into brand interactions in
online brand communities (Hollebeek et al. 2019). For example, engaged online
brand community members may seek out usage information disclosed by other
members to better understand the focal brand, write stories that expresses their
feelings about the focal brand, or vote on ideas related to the focal brand. Such
endeavors benefit online brand community members from interactions for learn-
ing and refining the focal brand’s knowledge and skills, or for obtaining improved
products and services resulting from collaborative brand-related interactions
(Hollebeek et al. 2019). Hence, participants with stronger brand engagement
may perceive greater extent of value-in-use about the brand’s offerings. From the
viewpoint of technology adoption, positive value perceptions may enhance per-
ceived usefulness of participating in the online brand community. That is, engag-
ing participants may therefore exhibit stronger intention to continually participate
in the online brand community (Bhattacherjee 2001).
H3 Online brand community participants’ brand engagement positively influences

participants’ continuance intention.
Service experience plays a central role in the service-dominant logic (see

Lusch et al. 2007; Vargo and Lusch 2004, 2006), which emphasizes value as being
13
collaboratively co-created by consumers, service providers, and other value part-

ners in a continuously interactive context (Lusch et al. 2007; Vargo and Lusch 2004;
Vargo and Lusch 2008a, b; Webster 1992). Consumers are thus considered co-cre-
ators of value, who actively participate in the value creation process. This asser-
tion is also one of the important features of healthy brand communities, which have
abundant processes that inspire community participants to engage in co-creative
activities with the brand and other members (Dessart et al. 2015; Hatch and Schultz
2010).
In a well-managed online brand community, members tend to have a strong feel-
ing that other members who would participate in co-creative brand activities exist,
and that it is easy to perform social interactions with these members as well as with
the brand. That is, online brand communities make it easy for community mem-
bers to understand and interact with each other, who convey a sense of presence
through identifiable information such as profile picture or name in the community
(see Biocca et al. 2001, 2003). Such feeling and awareness would assign meanings
to the community because the social relationship with community members contrib-
ute to a positive experience of brand community participation.
Online brand communities also represent a place (Ciolfi et al. 2008; Prasolova-
Førland 2008; Turner et al. 2005) due to their connection with and proximity to the
real world. Specifically, participants can be aware of where they are by the brand
image, atmosphere, discussion threads, and campaigns in the community. These
virtual artifacts inform community members about the bounded space of a brand’s
online community (see Benford et al. 1994; Gutwin and Greenberg 2002), thus
strengthening their location awareness. Online brand community’s use of live video
streaming, shared rituals, messaging (chat rooms), and campaigns further strength-
ens community members’ location awareness. In online brand communities that fos-
ter such location awareness, community members are more likely to conduct co-
creative activities of consuming, contributing, or creating (Muntinga et al. 2011) and
thus enjoy unique and intensified service experience within such specific place.
In online brand communities, participants can easily know how to look up brand
information, take part in brand activities, and search for product support with the
assistance of social media functionalities such as messenging, hashtags, and book-
marks. With the knowledge about how brand activities go on based on instructions,
messages, or actions of other community members (see Benford et al. 1994; Goel
et al. 2011; Gutwin et al. 1995), participants feel easy to achieve their goals and thus
enjoy better experience with the brand community. Based on the discussion above,
this study proposes H 4 as follows:
H4 Place attachment awareness positively influences the service experience associ-
ated with an online brand community.
Brand engagement occurs when individuals feel motivated to integrate relevant

cognitive, emotional, and behavioral resources to engage in brand-related co-cre-
ation activities (Hollebeek 2011b; Patterson et al. 2006). Members of flourishing
online brand communities easily sense the existence of others who would participate
13
468 K. Wang et al.
in brand-related social interactions as the awareness and strength of social ties posi-
tively leads to communicative interactions, such as word of mouth, within an online
community (Brown et al. 2007; Tsai and Men 2013; van Doorn et al. 2010). Fur-
thermore, brand-related activities and marketing campaigns on social media man-
ifest the features of the online brand community. Community members, informed
by these activities, thus become more engaged with the brand due to raised atten-
tion and interest. They engage more with the focal brand by integrating resources
in brand-related co-creation activities. Lastly, user participation in brand-related
activities is key to the success of online brand communities (Bolton and Saxena-Iyer
2009). As described earlier, brands have endeavored to utilize social media function-
alities to assist information sharing, immediate response, and quality support in their
online brand communities. Consumers could thus become aware of the resources
and tools available in online brand communities for their missions to be done, such
as inquiries about latest events, commenting on and sharing of published content,
and performing real-time communication with the brand for immediate feedback.
These efforts ensure community members’ brand engagement through effective cre-
ation and delivery of brand services (Cabiddu et al. 2014).
The above discussion suggests that the three types of awareness, i.e., social, loca-
tion, and task awareness, positively leads to community members’ engagement with
the brand. Hence, we propose H5 as follows:
H5 Place attachment awareness positively influences online brand community par-
ticipants’ brand engagement.
Social media nowadays make customers more informed, proactive, and empow-
ered in engaging with brands. That is, social media afford online brand community
members numerous opportunities and forms of communication with the brand, and
these opportunities further foster healthy conversation in the community (Liu 2003).
These opportunities of interaction include (1) making both brand’s and members’
behaviors, preferences, and styles visible; (2) allowing content published in the com-
munity to be accessible by all participants; (3) allowing crafting and recrafting of
communicative content before and after being published; and (4) establishing con-
nections between members as well as between members and published content.
These forms of interaction bring opportunities to create favorable experiences
in online brand communities. First, the affordance of visibility allows community
members to be aware of brand updates as well as other members’ behaviors (e.g.,
comments and recommendations). With higher information transparency, commu-
nity members could co-create personalized service experiences with the brand and
other community members (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004a). Second, due to the
widespread use of mobile devices, user interaction in online brand communities has
no limit in time and space. Higher degree of content availability and accessibility,
namely the persistence affordance, make it easier for members to access original
and rich brand-related information, contributing to value co-creation experiences in
online brand communities (Wang et al. 2016). Third, having control over posting,
modifying, and sharing content in the community allows brands and members to
present information in a desirable way (Treem and Leonardi 2012) and community
13
members to join in the value co-creation process for desirable collaboration and
communication (Wang et al. 2016). Lastly, as described earlier, the association
affordance enables online brand community members to build connection with each
other and associate with relevant content. The consequent word-of-mouth effect, one
of the most effective means of persuasion (Berkman 2013; Sweeney et al. 2008), co-
creates the value of the online brand community (See-To and Ho 2014) and further
contributes to positive service experiences.
Continuous and high-quality interactions between the brand and its customers,
enabled by social media affordances, thus allow the latter to co-create favorable and
unique experiences in online brand communities (Grissemann and Stokburger-Sauer
2012; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004a, b). We thus propose H6 as follows:
H6 Social media affordances positively influence the service experience associated
with an online brand community.
Capturing the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of brand-

related co-creation activities, brand engagement occurs when online brand com-
munity members are motivated to integrate relevant resources during online con-
sumer–brand interactions. High-quality co-creative interactions allow consumers,
as well as companies, to reap the benefits of value co-creation (Prahalad and
Ramaswamy 2004a, b). Thus, this study argues that users tend to be motivated to
engage with the focal brand when their interactions are co-creative in the online
brand community. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004a, b) further indicated that the
practices of dialogue, access, risk-return, and transparency facilitate such co-crea-
tive interactions. Dialogue means conversations between consumers and the firm,
implying interactivity, deep engagement, and willingness to act for both sides.
Dialogue, however, is difficult if consumers do not have equal access and trans-
parency to information relevant to establish dialogues. With dialogue, access, and
transparency, both consumers and the firm are enabled to assess the risk-benefits
of subsequent courses of decisions and actions.
As indicated above, social media affordances refer to the four distinct ways that
users perceive and use social media in their communicative actions, namely vis-
ibility, persistence, editability, and association (Treem and Leonardi 2012). These
four social media affordances facilitate the practices of dialogue, access, risk-ben-
efits, and transparency, which are conducive to co-creative interactions between
users and the brand. Visibility and association make information and behaviors
of both consumers and the firm in social media transparent to each other. Per-
sistence enables consumers and the firm to access each other’s digital footprints
for making informed choices. Editability allows consumers to craft and recraft
their conversations with others in social media. Because these affordances facili-
tate co-creative interactions in online brand communities, this study suggests that
social media affordances positively influence brand engagement of online brand
community participants. H 7 is therefore proposed as follows:
H7 Social media affordances positively influence online brand community partici-
pants’ brand engagement.
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470 K. Wang et al.
4 Method
4.1 Data collection
This study conducted an online survey to collect responses from online brand com-
munity participants. Participants were recruited from PTT (ptt.cc) and Facebook,
the largest online bulletin board system and social networking site in Taiwan. An
invitation was posted in various forums and groups of the two social media plat-
forms. Before taking the survey, participants were asked to name the brand of the
online brand community they most recently visited. Those who never had experi-
ences of participating in any online brand communities were excluded from the sub-
sequent survey process. A lucky draw for a NT$100 cash coupon (approximately
US$3) was conducted for the purpose of increasing the response rate. A total of 231
valid responses were collected for subsequent data analysis. The demographic pro-
file of the survey respondents is shown in Table 1.
4.2 Measurement development
Measures of research constructs were adapted from validated items developed by

prior studies. The original, English version of the measurement items were first
translated into Chinese by a bilingual research associate and then verified and
refined for translation accuracy by a professor specializing in online brand commu-
nity research. The Chinese version of the questionnaire was pretested by several IS
graduate students and two IS professors to ensure face and content validity, ease of
understanding, as well as contextual relevance of the statements. Seven-point Likert
scales anchored between “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree” were used.
Place attachment was operationalized in terms of social awareness, location
awareness, and task awareness (Goel et al. 2011). First, this study defined social
awareness as the extent one can express his or her own thoughts and understand oth-
ers’ ideas in a way that is appropriate with respect to members of the online brand
community. Second, because information exchange and marketing campaigns are
the primary activities in online brand communities, location awareness was defined
as the extent one perceives what online brand community he or she is located by
virtue of the discussions and activities he or she is aware of. Third, task awareness
refers to the extent one can understand a brand more through the posted messages
or content of discussions in an online brand community. Measurement items of
social awareness were adapted from Harms and Biocca (2004), and those of location
awareness and task awareness were from Moore and Benbasat (1991).
Affordance refers to potentials for action that technologies provide to users (Gib-
son 1979; Norman 1990). Such potentials for action are constructed out of the mate-
rial properties of technologies and individuals’ human agency to make choices.
Affordance thus focuses on the intersection between people’s goals and a technol-
ogy’s material features (Leonardi and Vaast 2017). Treem and Leonardi (2012) indi-
cated that social media possesses material properties that can facilitate unique ways
of presentation, storage, and flow of information, which are difficult or impossible to
13
Table 1 Demographic profile of Demographic variables Frequency Percentage

respondents (N = 231)
Age
18–22 35 15.1
23–34 131 56.7
35–44 29 12.5
45–54 11 4.7
Above 55 25 10.8
Occupation
Student 75 32.4
Military, government, and education 30 12.9
Service 68 29.4
Freelance 25 10.8
Retire 13 5.6
Others 20 8.6
Internet usage experience (years)
< 5 17 7.3
5–9 25 10.8
10–14 73 31.6
15–20 years 42 18.1
Above 20 74 32.0
Prior experience with the selected brand’s online brand community
(years)
< 1 25 10.8
1–3 131 56.7
4–6 61 26.4
More than 6s 14 6.0
Frequency of visiting the selected brand’s online brand community
Multiple times per day 17 7.3
At least once per day 93 40.2
At least once per week 99 42.8
At least once per month 19 5.7
At least once per year 3 1.2
find in other media. Hence, we defined visibility, persistence, editability, and associ-
ation as social media affordances that are enabled by social media’s material proper-
ties for supporting communicative actions in online community. These affordances
are common and prevalent in major social media platforms such as Wikipedia, Face-
book, Wordpress, Blogger, and Twitter (Treem and Leonardi 2012). We adopted
Facebook as the focal platform for study to control the differences of material prop-
erties among various social media and to better capture the idea of perceived affor-
dance (Leonardi 2011). Visibility refers to the extent to which a community member
perceives that Facebook makes his or her connections, status updates, interactions
with other members, and preference to the focal brand visible to other members. Per-
sistence refers to the extent to which one perceives that Facebook provides access to
13
472 K. Wang et al.
posts and conversations that he or she has posted or participated in. Editability was
defined as the extent to which an online community member perceives that Face-
book allows creation, modification, and reproduction of communicative content in
the community. Association refers to the extent to which one perceives that Face-
book enables establishing connections with other members and content. Based on
Treem and Leonardi (2012), this study used six, four, five, and four items to measure
the four social media affordances, respectively. The four affordances were operation-
alized as first-order reflective constructs.
Brand engagement manifests in three dimensions: cognitive processing, affection,
and activation (Hollebeek et al. 2014). Cognitive processing reflects an online brand
community member’s brand-related thought processing and elaboration. Affection
captures an online brand community member’s positive affect on the focal brand.
Activation refers to the extent of an online brand community member’s energy,
effort, and time spent on interacting with the focal brand (Brodie et al. 2013). Items
for the three dimensions were adapted from Hollebeek et al. (2014).
Service experience is constituted by four subconstructs: immersion, fun, partici-
pation, and surprise (Kao et al. 2008). In the current study, immersion reflects the
extent that an online community member involves himself or herself in community
activities and interactions and forgets the passing of time. Fun refers to a member’s
happiness and enjoyment obtained from participation in the online brand commu-
nity. Participation reflects the extent of an online brand community member’s inter-
action with the content and other members. Surprise refers to the freshness, spe-
cialty, and uniqueness perceived by a member during participating in the online
brand community. The measurement items of service experience were adapted from
Kao et al. (2008).
Continuance intention was defined as a member’s intention to continue participat-
ing in the online brand community. This construct was measured using three items
adapted from Bhattacherjee (2001). Two of the items measured an individual’s
intention to continuously participate in the focal brand’s online brand community
now and in the future. The other item measured an individual’s intention to continue
rather than to discontinue participation in the focal brand’s online brand community.
Consistent with Bhattacherjee (2001), continuance intention was operationalized as
a first-order construct reflected by these three indicators.
Measurement items used in this study are shown in “Appendix 1”.
5 Analysis
5.1 Measurement model validation
Table 2 reports the means and standard deviations of the research constructs. We
used SmartPLS 3.0 for subsequent parameter estimation and analysis due to normal-
ity distribution concern (Cassel et al. 1999; Ringle et al. 2015).
The parameters in the measurement model analysis were estimated using the fac-
tor weighting scheme (Hair et al. 2017). Item reliability, internal consistency reli-
ability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity tests were used to evaluate
13
Table 2 Descriptive statistics, reliability, and correlation coefficient matrix of constructs
Construct Mean STD CR Cronbach’s α 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1. Continuance intention 4.967 0.793 0.909 0.850 0.769

2. Cognitive processing 4.706 0.904 0.918 0.866 0.649 0.789
3. Affection 4.517 0.991 0.918 0.881 0.627 0.694 0.738
4. Activation 4.671 1.043 0.918 0.865 0.694 0.805 0.788 0.789
5. Immersion 4.271 1.118 0.864 0.688 0.499 0.650 0.756 0.683 0.761
6. Fun 4.369 1.020 0.937 0.911 0.559 0.676 0.800 0.685 0.824 0.789
7. Participation 4.681 0.979 0.949 0.918 0.647 0.663 0.748 0.737 0.682 0.724 0.860
8. Surprise 4.558 1.021 0.929 0.898 0.635 0.679 0.744 0.694 0.673 0.732 0.783
9. Social 4.495 0.984 0.898 0.849 0.520 0.621 0.647 0.602 0.664 0.710 0.634
10. Location 4.810 0.914 0.852 0.741 0.546 0.616 0.612 0.527 0.553 0.626 0.547
11. Task 4.940 0.810 0.903 0.856 0.660 0.573 0.494 0.526 0.448 0.522 0.636
12. Visibility 4.582 1.032 0.890 0.852 0.594 0.654 0.686 0.672 0.643 0.649 0.676
13. Persistence 4.668 1.020 0.910 0.868 0.592 0.542 0.555 0.553 0.521 0.578 0.636
Influences of place attachment and social media affordances…
14. Association 4.776 0.899 0.902 0.855 0.579 0.575 0.577 0.574 0.524 0.558 0.620
15. Editability 4.654 1.092 0.904 0.867 0.489 0.502 0.536 0.512 0.511 0.502 0.531
Construct Mean STD CR Cronbach’s α 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1. Continuance intention 4.967 0.793 0.909 0.850

2. Cognitive processing 4.706 0.904 0.918 0.866
3. Affection 4.517 0.991 0.918 0.881
4. Activation 4.671 1.043 0.918 0.865
5. Immersion 4.271 1.118 0.864 0.688
6. Fun 4.369 1.020 0.937 0.911
7. Participation 4.681 0.979 0.949 0.918
8. Surprise 4.558 1.021 0.929 0.898 0.767
473
13
9. Social 4.495 0.984 0.898 0.849 0.638 0.698

Table 2 (continued)
474
Construct Mean STD CR Cronbach’s α 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
13
10. Location 4.810 0.914 0.852 0.741 0.560 0.718 0.658
11. Task 4.940 0.810 0.903 0.856 0.605 0.572 0.553 0.699
12. Visibility 4.582 1.032 0.890 0.852 0.599 0.671 0.625 0.558 0.575
13. Persistence 4.668 1.020 0.910 0.868 0.642 0.578 0.505 0.656 0.743 0.717
14. Association 4.776 0.899 0.902 0.855 0.554 0.551 0.465 0.629 0.664 0.763 0.698
15. Editability 4.654 1.092 0.904 0.867 0.549 0.570 0.553 0.541 0.634 0.703 0.712 0.655
The values in the bold represent outer loadings of indicators on their corresponding factors
K. Wang et al.

the measurement model. As shown in “Appendix 2”, after deleting four items that
exhibited small loadings (i.e., immersion_3, participation_4, social_5, social_6),
the estimated path loadings for all first-order reflective factors (i.e., dimensions)
to their second-order factors (i.e., latent construct) and for all observed variables
(i.e., items) to the respective first-order factors were significant at 1% level. In addi-
tion, all loadings were > 0.7, indicating that all the dimensions and measurement
items presented good item reliability on their latent constructs (Hair et al. 2017).
Internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s α and composite reli-
ability. The former serves as lower bound while the latter serves as upper bound of
internal consistency reliability (Hair et al. 2017). As shown in Table 2, all the reli-
ability values were greater than the suggested threshold value of 0.7 except that of
immersion (Cronbach’s α = 0.688). Convergent validity was assessed by examining
the average variance extracted (AVE) value of each construct, with the threshold
being > 0.5 (Hair et al. 2017). Table 2 shows that all the constructs exhibited good
convergent validity because the smallest AVE value was 0.575. Discriminant valid-
ity was assessed by two criteria: (1) items should load more highly on the construct
they intend to measure than on other constructs, and (2) the square root value of the
average variance extracted (AVE) should be larger than the inter-construct correla-
tions (Hair et al. 2017). “Appendix 2” indicates that all items load higher on their
corresponding construct than on other constructs. Table 2 also shows that the square
root value of the AVE for each construct was greater than the correlations between
the construct and other constructs. That is, all constructs share more variances with
their indicators than with other constructs, exhibiting adequate discriminant valid-
ity. Taken together, these results suggested that our measurement items possessed
satisfactory psychometric properties to support the subsequent tests of the structural
model.
5.2 Structural model validation
Partial Least Square (PLS) adopts the ordinary least squares (OLS) technique to esti-
mate path coefficients in the structural model and may generate biased path coeffi-
cients if the estimation involves significant level of collinearity among the predictor
constructs (Hair et al. 2017). This study evaluated construct collinearity of predictor
constructs separately for each subpart of the structural model. The analyses showed
that all VIF values were below the threshold value of 5 (2.145–3.986), indicating
that construct collinearity was not a significant problem. A bootstrapping technique
with path weighting scheme and 300 resamples was then performed to test the statis-
tical significance of the path coefficients using t test (Hair et al. 2017).
This study adopted a two-stage hierarchical component model (HCM) analysis to
test the hypotheses (Hair et al. 2017). Brand engagement was modeled as a reflec-
tive–reflective second-order construct for two reasons. First, there are substantial
correlations between cognitive processing, affection, and activation in an individ-
ual’s brand interaction experiences (Hollebeek et al. 2014). Second, brand engage-
ment causes such correlations (Cheung et al. 2011). In contrast, service experience
13
476 K. Wang et al.
was modeled as a reflective–formative second-order construct. This is because (1)

a change in the values of immersion, fun, surprise, and participation changes the
value of service experience, and (2) the values of immersion, fun, surprise, and par-
ticipation do not necessary correlate with each other (Kao et al. 2008). The other
constructs were modeled as reflective first-order constructs. Moreover, in the first
stage of the HCM analysis, both brand engagement and service experience utilized
the measurement items of their underlying components as indicators to perform PLS
estimation. In the second stage, the scores of immersion, fun, surprise, and partic-
ipation served as manifest variables of service experience in the subsequent PLS
analysis. This procedure can identify significant path relationships (i.e., those point-
ing to the formative second-order construct of service experience) that may not oth-
erwise be found in the previous stage (Hair et al. 2017).
The objective of PLS-SEM analysis is to maximize the explained variance instead
of minimizing the differences between covariance matrices. Therefore, a set of heu-
ristic criteria that are determined by the model’s predictive capabilities, in contrast
to those used for testing the overall goodness of model fit in CB-SEM, are suggested
for assessing model fit in PLS-SEM (Hair et al. 2017). Specifically, PLS assesses
model fit in terms of how a model predicts the endogenous variables or constructs.
The key criteria for assessing the structural model include (1) the significance of the
path coefficients, (2) the level of the R2 values, (3) the f2 effect size, (4) the predic-
tive relevance Q2, or (5) the q2 effect size (Hair et al. 2017).
Table 3 presents the results of PLS analysis for the structural model. With one-
tailed t-test, five path coefficients in the structural model were significant at p < 0.01,
four path coefficients were significant at p < 0.05, and three path coefficients were
significant at p < 0.1. The remaining five path coefficients were insignificant at
p < 0.1. In terms of research hypotheses, H 1, H2, and H3 received complete empiri-
cal support while H4, H5, H6, and H7 received partial support. The results showed
that our research model explained 51.8% of the variance in continuance intention,
78.9% of the variance in brand engagement, and 68.0% of the variance in service
experience.
We then examined the Q2 value to assess the model’s predictive relevance
(Hair et al. 2017). The Q2 measure applies a sample reuse technique that omits
part of the data points and reconstructs the data points of indicators in endog-
enous constructs by using the model and its parameter estimates. Values of 0.02,
0.15, and 0.35 indicate that exogenous constructs have small, medium, and large
predictive relevance, respectively, for a selected endogenous construct (Hair et al.
2017). Adopting the cross-validated redundancy approach with omission distance
of 6 (Hair et al. 2017), the Q2 values of the endogenous constructs ranged from
0.368 to 0.484, indicating high predictive relevance of the exogenous constructs.
Lastly, we calculated the f2 effect size to assess the change in the R2 value
when a specified predictor construct is omitted from the model. As shown in
Table 3, service experience had high effect on the R2 value of brand engagement;
brand engagement had medium effect on the R2 value of continuance intention;
local awareness, task awareness, social awareness, visibility, persistence, and
association had small effects on the R2 values of the corresponding endogenous
13
Table 3 Results of PLS structural analysis

Endogenous construct
Service experience Brand engagement Continuance inten-

tion
β f2 β f2 β f2
Location 0.087 0.010 0.102* 0.020

Social 0.322*** 0.123 − 0.016 0.000
Task 0.153** 0.034 − 0.011 0.000
Visibility 0.215*** 0.048 0.235*** 0.083
Persistence 0.126* 0.013 − 0.178** 0.041
Editability − 0.034 0.001 0.005 0.000
Association 0.109* 0.012 0.136** 0.029
Service experience 0.680*** 0.708 0.218** 0.018
Brand engagement 0.523*** 0.157
R2 0.680 0.789 0.518
Q2 0.484 0.458 0.368
*, **, and *** indicate significance at p < 0.1, p < 0.05, and p < 0.01, respectively (one-tailed test)
The threshold for small, medium, and large f2 and Q2 values are 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35, respectively
The f2 effect size can be calculated as (Rincluded
2 2
− Rexcluded 2
)/(1 − Rincluded 2
). Rincluded 2
and Rexcluded represent
the R2 values of endogenous construct when the specified predictor construct is used and omitted in the
structural model, respectively
constructs. The results indicated that most of our predictor constructs were rel-
evant to explaining their respective endogenous constructs.
Recent studies have begun to introduce various model fit measures such as
goodness-of-fit index (GoF), SRMR, RMStheta, and exact fit test (c.f. Hair et al.
2017). We thus report SRMR, which was provided in the SmartPLS 3 software,
here. Standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) is defined as the differ-
ence between the observed correlation and the model implied correlation matrix.
It allows assessing the average magnitude of the discrepancies between observed
and expected correlations as an absolute measure of model fit criterion. A value
< 0.08 is considered a good fit (Hu and Bentler 1998). The SRMR value of our
PLS analysis was 0.073, indicating that our model fit has been established (Hair
et al. 2017).
5.3 Findings
Our analysis showed that service experience has positive impact on brand engage-
ment (H1). Moreover, both service experience (H2) and brand engagement (H3) posi-
tively influence online brand community participants’ continuance intention. Further
analysis also showed that service experience has significant and positive indirect
13
478 K. Wang et al.
effect on continuance intention through the mediation of brand engagement, and that
the effect size (0.356) is greater than that of the direct effect (0.218) service experi-
ence has on continuance intention. These results indicated that while service experi-
ence facilitates continuance intention, brand engagement can further strengthen such
impact with much greater magnitude.
With regard to the antecedents of service experience, our analysis showed that
both social awareness and task awareness positively affect service experience while
location awareness does not (H4). Moreover, our analysis indicated that visibility,
persistence and association affordances have positive impact on service experience,
but editability affordance does not (H6). Hence, H4 and H6 were partially supported
in this study.
In addition, the data analysis showed that among the three types of awareness,
only location awareness has positive impact on brand engagement (H5). Moreover,
visibility and association affordances were found to have positive influence on brand
engagement (H7). To our surprise, persistence affordance was found to have negative
impact on brand engagement. Taken together, these findings suggest that H5 and H 7
were also partially supported by the empirical data.
6 Discussion
The primary purpose of this study is to build a holistic picture of customers’ par-
ticipation behavior in online brand communities. In contrast with prior research that
took a technology use perspective, this study underlined the pivotal roles of service
experience and brand engagement in motivating members’ continuous participa-
tion in online brand communities. Our findings corroborated such conjectures and
showed that the two factors indeed positively affect members’ continuance intention
for participation in online brand communities.
The result that service experience has positive impact on continuance intention
(H2) is consistent with Wang (2015), which showed that service experience has
direct and positive impact on continuance intention of mobile value-added services.
Service experience represents the goal value in the context of online brand com-
munity usage (Chen and Chen 2010) and engenders members’ positive perceptions
of usefulness of the online brand community. Therefore, as predicted by the IS con-
tinuance model (Bhattacherjee 2001), service experience should be able to directly
affect continuance intention of participating in online brand communities.
The finding that brand engagement has positive effect on continuance inten-
tion is consistent with Hollebeek et al. (2014), which showed that consumer brand
engagement positively influences brand usage intention. Our result also echoes
Sprott et al.’s (2009) finding regarding the positive effect of brand engagement in
self-concept (BESC) on consumers’ brand identification. Compared to these studies,
our research additionally revealed that brand engagement contributes to enhanced
customer relationship with a focal brand due to the collaborative brand-related inter-
actions. As a result of enhanced customer–brand relationship, customers tend to per-
form loyal behaviors to the brand, such as continual participation in online brand
communities.
13
This study further showed instrumental and contextual factors that lead to
enhanced service experience and brand engagement. In particular, we found that
social and task awareness in H4, and that visibility, persistence and association
affordance of social media in H 6, serve as the most influential antecedents of ser-
vice experience. This is not surprising because service experience in online brand
communities is co-creative in nature and heavily relies on interactions among com-
munity members (Zhang et al. 2017). Online customer experience entails cognitive
and affective components (Rose et al. 2012). The visibility affordance appears to be
more effective for improving the cognitive aspect of service experience because the
capacity of making social information visible to others is a pivotal utility for online
brand community members. Moreover, social awareness is an important factor con-
tributing to positive and favorable service experience because it increases social
interactions that stimulate members to derive feelings and emotions about the online
brand community.
In addition, we found that brand engagement is predominantly influenced by ser-
vice experience (H1) despite the significant impacts of location awareness (H5) and
visibility and association affordances of social media (H7). Such finding is consist-
ent with Zhang et al. (2017), who also indicated customer experience strengthens
engagement in online brand communities. These findings, taken together, revealed
that online brand community members tend to evaluate service experience for vol-
untary and active engagement with the focal brand for value co-creation. In addition,
Akaka et al. (2015) underscored that support of appropriate instruments facilitates
users to co-create unique interaction experiences. Our findings exemplified such
assertion and showed that visibility and association affordances as well as location
awareness serve as effective instrumental and contextual drivers for brand engage-
ment in online brand communities.
Some paths failed to be supported in the analysis. Virtual artifacts such as live
video streaming, discussion threads, and campaigns are commonplace on social
media across online brand communities. It is one of the possible reasons why the
relationship between location awareness and service experience was insignificant,
because these features alone do not guarantee unique online brand community expe-
riences. Moreover, in most online brand communities, participants are not respon-
sible for maintaining content. They can edit their comments, of course, but that is
not the main activity that contribute to service experience in online brand communi-
ties. As for the insignificant impacts of specific placement attachment (in H5) and
social media affordance (in H7) factors on brand engagement, our findings can be
interpreted as follows. First, in most online brand communities, only curators regu-
larly appear and express clear informational cues for community members to per-
ceive social awareness of a brand. Besides, most online brand communities carry
out similar activities (e.g., leaving comments, messenging, hashtaging, or sharing),
thus producing indifferent task awareness of a specific brand for community mem-
bers. Second, our research showed that visibility and association have significant
positive effects on brand engagement while persistence and editability do not. This
is understandable because persistence and editability are irrelevant to brand-specific
13
480 K. Wang et al.
interactions in most cases. Therefore, both social media affordances fail to improve
community members’ engagement toward the brand.
7 Conclusion
Online brand community participants play the dual roles of not only technol-
ogy users but also service consumers (AlHinai et al. 2007; Kim et al. 2007). Prior
research has emphasized the role of experience in brand management and technol-
ogy continuance (e.g., Brakus et al. 2009; Wang 2015). The current research not
only echoes the line of research on technology continuance but also makes signifi-
cant contribution to IS and marketing literature by integrating the multidisciplinary
perspective into online brand community research. By incorporating place attach-
ment and social media affordances, our research also indicates the mediating role
of online brand community experience and brand engagement on the relationship
between both place attachment and social media affordances and continuance inten-
tion for participation in online brand communities.
7.1 Research implications
Increasing research recognizes the co-creative nature of online communities (Baldus

et al. 2015; Jaakkola and Alexander 2014; Schivinski et al. 2016) and thus under-
lines the pivotal role of brand engagement in facilitating the continuance of value
co-creation and participation in online brand communities (Brodie et al. 2013; Hol-
lebeek et al. 2014; Zhang et al. 2017). Our research not only corroborates such con-
jecture but also provides further insights. In particular, both brand engagement and
service experience have significant influence on members’ continuance intention of
participating in online brand communities. In contrast to brand engagement, which
specifically addresses the experience of collaborative customer–brand interactions,
service experience refers to feelings or emotions stimulated by technology plat-
forms (e.g., social media) or co-created by user–community interactions. Accord-
ingly, our findings contribute to the literature by showing that the above two kinds
of user experience lead to enhanced continuance intention of participating in online
brand communities. Such contribution also echoes the service ecosystem theory of
Vargo and Lusch (2011), which stresses that co-created value experiences can occur
in interactions between all actors (i.e., users, other community members, brand, and
social media) connected by shared institutions (i.e., online brand community). It
should be noted, however, that this study does not distinguish between experiences
derived from user–technology interactions and those from user–community interac-
tions. Rather, this study adopts the concept of service experience to tap these two
kinds of experiences. Future research, therefore, can address this issue by identify-
ing more granular user experience constructs and investigate their relative effects on
continuance intention of participating in online brand communities.
13
This study also contributes to the literature by investigating the role of service
experience and brand engagement in online brand community continuance. The
findings indicated that service experience is concerned more with meaning and
value that users derive from attaching to the online brand community through social
awareness and task awareness. In contrast, brand engagement requires appropriate
social media support, namely visibility and association affordances, to facilitate
collaborative user–brand interactions. These findings imply that contextual factors
are more effective for developing experiences of member–community interactions,
while instrumental factors are more effective for deriving experiences of mem-
ber–brand interactions. Therefore, future studies are suggested to take a step fur-
ther by exploring the antecedents of different interactive experiences in online brand
communities.
7.2 Practical implications
With the increasing importance of social media in modern business environment,

findings of the current study offer practical implications for the development and
management of online brand communities. Facing intense competition in the mar-
ket, brand managers are eager to seek all possible means to retain their customers.
Online brand communities offer a promising opportunity for developing custom-
ers’ brand loyalty because such communities ensure the effectiveness of promot-
ing a brand (McAlexander et al. 2002), help deepening customers’ impressions on
brand stories and culture, assist collecting information regarding customer opinions
about and comments on the products or services of a particular brand (Muniz and
O’Guinn 2001), and allow community members to share consumption experiences
and interests, contributing to product modification and innovation ideas (Füller et al.
2008). It has thus become a challenge to retain online brand members to ensure their
continual participation in the community.
Findings of this study indicated that both place attachment and social media
affordances serve as important drivers for continual participation in online brand
communities. It is unrealistic to build an online brand community on a social media
platform and thus expect members to continue developing relationships and sticking
with it. First, designing an online brand community in which participants feel easy
to make sense of social-, location-, and task-related cues and associate meaning is
important. To enhance social awareness, online brand community managers need
to encourage community members to develop social relationships through tagging
friends or engaging in offline activities, which are common practice for car com-
munity members. Online brand community managers also need to develop salient
brand image, culture, and atmosphere so as to help manifesting the characteristics
of the community. Lastly, messenging, hashtags, and immediate response can assist
community members to engage in brand activities, inquire about product informa-
tion, and look for customer support more quickly and efficiently. All these efforts
help in strengthening members’ attachment with and continuance intention for the
online brand community.
13
482 K. Wang et al.
Second, social media serves as a communication platform that enables rela-

tionship building, co-creation, and interaction between a brand and its custom-
ers. Mobile technologies have made social media users’ behaviors and preferences
more visible than before. For example, one could know who have recommended or
checked in at a store that he or she is passing by or receive latest marketing updates
of a particular brand through push notifications on his or her smartphone. Social
media also affords online brand community participants to search, browse, and
quote previously published content such that discussion threads become more inter-
esting and interactive. In addition, not only curators but also members can create
and edit content in online brand communities. For example, video uploading and
post sharing are popular practices of content co-creation in online brand communi-
ties. Moreover, building connections between members (e.g., through tagging or fol-
lowing) and between members and content (e.g., through hashtags and bookmarks)
further enhances co-creation experiences and, together with other three types of
social media affordances, entices members to stick with and continue participating
in the online brand community.
Third, online brand communities are more than an online forum in which mem-
bers discuss and share opinions regarding the brand. Because recent technology
advances such as location-based services and augmented reality have blurred the
boundary between online and offline channels (Brynjolfsson et al. 2013), online
brand communities could serve as a platform that bridges online and offline expe-
riences. For example, Nike+, an activity tracking platform for runners, have suc-
cessfully created a community that connects members’ offline running activities
with their online experiences on diverse social media such as Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. Moreover, Nike+ members connect through this community and fur-
ther develop stronger commitment and engagement with the brand, Nike. Ben &
Jerry’s is another example that have engaged and connected with a larger number of
dedicated fans through communities on social media. Through the interactive online
campaign of “Fan photo of the week” and the ritualization of their “free-cone day”
celebration, Ben & Jerry’s have further strengthened consumers’ brand engagement
and participation in both online and offline activities as well as communities.
7.3 Limitations
Research limitations exist and must be noted. First, data collection for this study
was conducted on two of the largest online social platforms in Taiwan. Those who
have experiences in participating in online brand communities were invited to take
the survey and give their responses based on their usage experience with Facebook
Fan Pages. To generalize our findings to other online social contexts, more social
media platforms such as Twitter, LINE, and Instagram need to be considered. Sec-
ond, as shown in Table 1, a large portion of respondents were aged between 23 and
34. Therefore, researchers need to be cautious about the generalizability of research
findings because such distribution of age could be due to the convenience sampling
13
in online surveys. Third, in contrast to the self-reported perceptual data this study
used, actual behavioral data, if available, would provide a more accurate picture of
online brand community participation on social media platforms.
Appendix 1: Measurement items
Continuance intention
1. I intend to continue participating in [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

2. My intentions are to continue rather than discontinue participating in [brand]’s
Facebook fan page.
3. If I could, I would like to continue my use of [brand]’s Facebook fan page in the
future.
Brand engagement
Cognitive processing
1. Using [brand]’s Facebook fan page gets me to think about [brand].

2. I think about [brand] a lot when I am using [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
3. Using [brand]’s fan page stimulates my interest to learn more about [brand].
Affection
1. I feel very positive about [brand] when I use [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
2. Using [brand]’s Facebook fan page makes me happy about [brand].
3. I feel good about [brand] when I use [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
4. I am proud to use [brand] when I use [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
Activation
1. I spend a lot of time using [brand]’s Facebook fan page, compared to other brands.
2. I usually use [brand] whenever I am using Facebook fan page.
3. [Brand] is one of the brands I usually use when I use Facebook fan pages.
Service experience
Immersion
1. I feel involved in using [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

2. My mood changes according to interactions on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
3. While using [brand]’s Facebook fan page, I forget that time is passing.
Surprise
1. The information and interactions on [brand]’s Facebook fan page are special.
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484 K. Wang et al.
2. The contents provided by [brand]’s Facebook fan page are fresh.

3. Some unexpected situation happened on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
4. There are some unexpected and fresh things on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
Participation
1. I applaud [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

2. I would like to experience all the functions/contents on [brand]’s Facebook fan
page.
3. I followed the contents on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
4. I interacted with members of [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
Fun
1. I had fun during the use of [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

2. I felt excited during the use of [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
3. I had lots of fun on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
4. I really enjoyed [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
Place attachment
Location awareness
1. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, I was aware of the topics other members talked
about.
2. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, I was aware of the topics that are related to this
[brand].
3. I was conscious of interactions around me on [brand]’s Facebook fan page.
Social awareness
1. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, my thoughts expressed were clear to other mem-
bers.
2. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, the thoughts expressed by other members were
clear to me.
3. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, it was easy to understand other members.
4. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, I can express thoughts that are understandable
by other members.
5. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, other members had difficulty understanding me.
6. On [brand]’s Facebook fan page, understanding other members was difficult.
Task awareness
1. The messages and pictures posted on [brand]’s Facebook fan page helped me
collect information.
13
2. The messages posted on [brand]’s Facebook fan page helped me understand the
activities to be held by this brand.
3. The information circulated on [brand]’s Facebook fan page made it easier for me
to interact with the brand.
4. The information provided on [brand]’s Facebook fan page let me understand this
brand more.
Social media affordances

Visibility
With the assistance of Facebook,
1. My online interaction activities can be made visible to other members.

2. My knowledge about this brand can be disclosed to other members.
3. I can contact curators or members of this online brand community.
4. I can disclose my interests and preferences to other members.
5. I can reach people who are interested in this brand.
6. I can keep in touch with members of this online brand community.
Persistence
1. I can retain the content I posted.

2. I can find the content I posted.
3. I can share the published content to somewhere else.
4. I can store, search, and access the content I posted.
Editability
1. I can edit the content to be published.

2. I can modify the content I published in the manner I want others to see.
3. I can publish content to specific community members who would be attracted.
4. I can modify the content I have posted.
5. I can collaborate with other community members to edit the content.
Association
1. I can establish social connections with other community members (e.g., adding
friends or following other members).
2. I can be associated with specific content that have been published (e.g., through
functions of “like,” “tagging,” “saving,” etc.)
3. I can get to know users or communities I might be interested in (e.g., recom-
mended friends, fan pages, or interest groups).
4. I can be notified of content that I might be interested in.
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486 K. Wang et al.
Note: All items were measured using seven-point Likert scale (1 = strongly dis-
agree, 2 = disagree, 3 = a little disagree, 4 = neither agree nor disagree, 5 = a little
agree, 6 = agree, 7 = strongly agree).
Appendix 2: Outer model loadings and cross loadings
Continuance Cognition Affection Activation Immersion Fun Participation

intention processing
continuance_1 0.868 0.540 0.475 0.559 0.369 0.436 0.593

continuance_2 0.866 0.584 0.535 0.616 0.464 0.476 0.469
continuance_3 0.897 0.582 0.629 0.645 0.472 0.551 0.637
cognition_1 0.549 0.888 0.720 0.589 0.603 0.577 0.561
cognition_2 0.586 0.873 0.717 0.635 0.567 0.615 0.591
cognition_3 0.594 0.905 0.710 0.625 0.563 0.611 0.615
affection_1 0.559 0.720 0.863 0.668 0.618 0.640 0.651
affection_2 0.553 0.759 0.876 0.683 0.705 0.768 0.679
affection_3 0.557 0.682 0.901 0.713 0.696 0.766 0.681
affection_4 0.484 0.599 0.793 0.642 0.574 0.561 0.553
activation_1 0.517 0.547 0.640 0.820 0.662 0.599 0.628
activation_2 0.676 0.637 0.689 0.928 0.583 0.614 0.636
activation_3 0.648 0.659 0.765 0.913 0.586 0.613 0.699
immersion_1 0.520 0.697 0.709 0.632 0.890 0.755 0.644
immersion_2 0.340 0.421 0.606 0.557 0.854 0.680 0.540
fun_1 0.474 0.611 0.694 0.585 0.763 0.906 0.646
fun_2 0.474 0.516 0.649 0.588 0.662 0.865 0.578
fun_3 0.505 0.665 0.743 0.630 0.754 0.901 0.640
fun_4 0.532 0.606 0.751 0.628 0.746 0.881 0.703
participation_1 0.605 0.629 0.718 0.676 0.658 0.697 0.950
participation_2 0.609 0.608 0.702 0.698 0.646 0.681 0.952
participation_3 0.585 0.609 0.661 0.678 0.592 0.635 0.878
surprise_1 0.486 0.609 0.690 0.573 0.623 0.648 0.680
surprise_2 0.587 0.565 0.600 0.616 0.590 0.632 0.712
surprise_3 0.534 0.569 0.618 0.610 0.585 0.612 0.611
surprise_4 0.616 0.631 0.695 0.630 0.561 0.672 0.735
social_1 0.426 0.530 0.483 0.471 0.482 0.552 0.484
social_2 0.448 0.503 0.570 0.459 0.544 0.614 0.555
social_3 0.400 0.541 0.563 0.508 0.636 0.604 0.564
social_4 0.453 0.486 0.527 0.557 0.533 0.583 0.496
location_1 0.397 0.529 0.438 0.327 0.346 0.412 0.359
location_2 0.498 0.555 0.534 0.476 0.453 0.518 0.402
13
Continuance Cognition Affection Activation Immersion Fun Participation

intention processing
location_3 0.427 0.425 0.508 0.460 0.526 0.574 0.552
task_1 0.534 0.450 0.380 0.412 0.344 0.428 0.541
task_2 0.589 0.452 0.366 0.427 0.316 0.366 0.527
task_3 0.499 0.528 0.432 0.439 0.463 0.502 0.515
task_4 0.588 0.475 0.461 0.474 0.360 0.436 0.541
visibility_1 0.436 0.479 0.440 0.464 0.421 0.464 0.428
visibility_2 0.451 0.480 0.497 0.432 0.400 0.427 0.435
visibility_3 0.462 0.459 0.486 0.537 0.522 0.452 0.614
visibility_4 0.442 0.574 0.554 0.485 0.496 0.503 0.502
visibility_5 0.448 0.530 0.623 0.580 0.544 0.569 0.545
visibility_6 0.461 0.446 0.497 0.540 0.522 0.522 0.529
persistence_1 0.450 0.384 0.422 0.390 0.371 0.462 0.503
persistence_2 0.539 0.535 0.526 0.526 0.479 0.517 0.561
persistence_3 0.540 0.465 0.452 0.458 0.410 0.471 0.526
persistence_4 0.471 0.440 0.471 0.486 0.493 0.502 0.561
editability_1 0.387 0.385 0.392 0.400 0.364 0.388 0.472
editability_2 0.437 0.357 0.407 0.413 0.401 0.422 0.401
editability_3 0.394 0.400 0.470 0.460 0.496 0.427 0.449
editability_4 0.314 0.402 0.393 0.329 0.383 0.383 0.382
editability_5 0.431 0.477 0.489 0.451 0.406 0.403 0.430
associations_1 0.397 0.386 0.441 0.415 0.418 0.397 0.511
associations_2 0.516 0.532 0.442 0.447 0.394 0.482 0.489
associations_3 0.493 0.516 0.541 0.481 0.489 0.528 0.553
associations_4 0.523 0.480 0.497 0.568 0.446 0.450 0.518
Surprise Social Location Task Visibility Persistence Editability Association
continuance_1 0.498 0.367 0.415 0.591 0.479 0.512 0.358 0.497

continuance_2 0.582 0.485 0.476 0.540 0.509 0.509 0.443 0.465
continuance_3 0.586 0.507 0.537 0.606 0.568 0.535 0.477 0.557
cognition_1 0.586 0.486 0.544 0.454 0.537 0.450 0.439 0.446
cognition_2 0.627 0.578 0.550 0.551 0.586 0.501 0.406 0.549
cognition_3 0.595 0.588 0.549 0.521 0.618 0.494 0.493 0.537
affection_1 0.646 0.603 0.560 0.487 0.609 0.482 0.530 0.535
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488 K. Wang et al.

affection_2 0.671 0.589 0.594 0.472 0.632 0.507 0.477 0.542
affection_3 0.660 0.587 0.529 0.432 0.607 0.500 0.489 0.496
affection_4 0.574 0.435 0.410 0.292 0.501 0.414 0.335 0.401
activation_1 0.630 0.506 0.370 0.375 0.578 0.494 0.408 0.451
activation_2 0.609 0.541 0.493 0.510 0.596 0.504 0.488 0.547
activation_3 0.615 0.555 0.529 0.507 0.617 0.479 0.466 0.528
immersion_1 0.638 0.642 0.535 0.471 0.644 0.551 0.488 0.496
immersion_2 0.532 0.509 0.423 0.301 0.469 0.345 0.398 0.414
fun_1 0.622 0.627 0.504 0.433 0.566 0.505 0.425 0.517
fun_2 0.638 0.578 0.513 0.405 0.529 0.483 0.431 0.461
fun_3 0.636 0.625 0.611 0.471 0.575 0.506 0.463 0.498
fun_4 0.704 0.687 0.591 0.541 0.633 0.556 0.464 0.505
participation_1 0.748 0.596 0.490 0.578 0.642 0.619 0.461 0.597
participation_2 0.746 0.618 0.496 0.593 0.644 0.616 0.495 0.597
participation_3 0.683 0.547 0.539 0.600 0.593 0.532 0.524 0.528
surprise_1 0.845 0.578 0.446 0.424 0.547 0.498 0.431 0.429
surprise_2 0.870 0.518 0.483 0.546 0.526 0.600 0.477 0.507
surprise_3 0.897 0.567 0.464 0.530 0.485 0.537 0.503 0.461
surprise_4 0.890 0.573 0.566 0.614 0.537 0.612 0.510 0.541
social_1 0.478 0.823 0.642 0.441 0.542 0.478 0.466 0.440
social_2 0.556 0.836 0.596 0.536 0.562 0.518 0.514 0.531
social_3 0.511 0.804 0.569 0.473 0.576 0.442 0.409 0.422
social_4 0.569 0.855 0.580 0.443 0.543 0.479 0.502 0.432
location_1 0.337 0.481 0.782 0.383 0.415 0.350 0.352 0.340
location_2 0.486 0.599 0.851 0.469 0.511 0.405 0.441 0.377
location_3 0.518 0.649 0.799 0.483 0.578 0.462 0.533 0.409
task_1 0.449 0.459 0.485 0.829 0.487 0.537 0.459 0.568
task_2 0.455 0.374 0.398 0.854 0.405 0.506 0.391 0.500
task_3 0.596 0.582 0.473 0.804 0.474 0.582 0.479 0.503
task_4 0.503 0.476 0.486 0.856 0.492 0.560 0.469 0.533
visibility_1 0.394 0.499 0.405 0.367 0.716 0.570 0.428 0.434
visibility_2 0.415 0.496 0.441 0.437 0.767 0.608 0.517 0.545
visibility_3 0.519 0.509 0.459 0.447 0.789 0.543 0.469 0.456
visibility_4 0.407 0.527 0.485 0.427 0.788 0.604 0.519 0.565
visibility_5 0.521 0.552 0.551 0.430 0.751 0.506 0.494 0.506
visibility_6 0.448 0.462 0.483 0.428 0.737 0.562 0.456 0.516
persistence_1 0.497 0.440 0.436 0.509 0.573 0.835 0.616 0.623
persistence_2 0.612 0.524 0.444 0.606 0.662 0.888 0.642 0.705
persistence_3 0.512 0.473 0.456 0.646 0.657 0.850 0.592 0.698
persistence_4 0.544 0.512 0.376 0.459 0.618 0.813 0.532 0.557
editability_1 0.458 0.451 0.444 0.477 0.486 0.597 0.829 0.582
editability_2 0.457 0.455 0.444 0.447 0.519 0.645 0.866 0.637
editability_3 0.481 0.500 0.438 0.429 0.581 0.624 0.801 0.583
editability_4 0.383 0.397 0.425 0.392 0.465 0.524 0.812 0.548
13

editability_5 0.427 0.484 0.474 0.435 0.497 0.447 0.733 0.525
associations_1 0.414 0.406 0.345 0.441 0.451 0.540 0.590 0.793
associations_2 0.463 0.522 0.419 0.597 0.536 0.608 0.622 0.816
associations_3 0.504 0.462 0.420 0.538 0.638 0.711 0.624 0.880
associations_4 0.465 0.449 0.366 0.523 0.579 0.678 0.548 0.850
The values in the bold represent outer loadings of indicators on their corresponding factors
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Information Systems and e-Business Management (2021) 19:459–493

Influences of place attachment and social media

Kai Wang1 · Jeffrey C. F. Tai2 · Hsin‑Lu Chang3

Keywords Online brand community · Service experience · Brand engagement ·

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

2 Theoretical foundation and literature review

2.1 Place attachment theory

attachment, whereas weakened identification leads to place detachment (Relph

2.2 Social media affordances

Engagement and involvement are commonly-adopted constructs for the study of

3 Research model and hypotheses

Brodie et al. (2011) defined customer engagement as “a psychological state,

Optimal user experience plays an important role in forming satisfaction with

Brand engagement in online brand communities refers to one’s positive brand-

H3 Online brand community participants’ brand engagement positively influences

Service experience plays a central role in the service-dominant logic (see

collaboratively co-created by consumers, service providers, and other value part-

Brand engagement occurs when individuals feel motivated to integrate relevant

Capturing the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of brand-

Measures of research constructs were adapted from validated items developed by

Table 1 Demographic profile of Demographic variables Frequency Percentage

5.1 Measurement model validation

1. Continuance intention 4.967 0.793 0.909 0.850 0.769

1. Continuance intention 4.967 0.793 0.909 0.850

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

Construct Mean STD CR Cronbach’s α 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

5.2 Structural model validation

was modeled as a reflective–formative second-order construct. This is because (1)

Table 3 Results of PLS structural analysis

Service experience Brand engagement Continuance inten-

Location 0.087 0.010 0.102* 0.020

Increasing research recognizes the co-creative nature of online communities (Baldus

With the increasing importance of social media in modern business environment,

Second, social media serves as a communication platform that enables rela-

Appendix 1: Measurement items

1. I intend to continue participating in [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

1. Using [brand]’s Facebook fan page gets me to think about [brand].

1. I feel involved in using [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

2. The contents provided by [brand]’s Facebook fan page are fresh.

1. I applaud [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

1. I had fun during the use of [brand]’s Facebook fan page.

Social media affordances

1. My online interaction activities can be made visible to other members.

1. I can retain the content I posted.

1. I can edit the content to be published.

Appendix 2: Outer model loadings and cross loadings

Continuance Cognition Affection Activation Immersion Fun Participation

continuance_1 0.868 0.540 0.475 0.559 0.369 0.436 0.593

Continuance Cognition Affection Activation Immersion Fun Participation

continuance_1 0.498 0.367 0.415 0.591 0.479 0.512 0.358 0.497

Surprise Social Location Task Visibility Persistence Editability Association

Surprise Social Location Task Visibility Persistence Editability Association

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2 Theoretical foundation and literature review

2.1 Place attachment theory

2.2 Social media affordances

3 Research model and hypotheses

Table 1 Demographic profile of Demographic variables Frequency Percentage

5.1 Measurement model validation

5.2 Structural model validation

Table 3 Results of PLS structural analysis