The Impact of Cultural Distance on the Internationalization of Online Professional Communities: An Empirical Investigation of ISWorld

摘要

We report on an empirical investigation about how cultural distance affects the internationalization of an academic online community. Attracting more active participants from different countries is an important goal for many online professional communities. Based on the theories and findings in the innovation diffusion and internationalization literature, we propose that cultural distance has significant negative effects on the active usage of an online community across different countries, while economic conditions will moderate the impact of cultural distance. An empirical study based on the archival data from an academic online community supports the central hypotheses proposed above.