The Effect of Social Anonymity on Community Quality : Mediated by Self Expression, Self Control, and Community Ties

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social anonymity on community quality and find out mediating factors that affect the relationship between social anonymity and community quality in online community sites. This study focuses on the factors such as self expression, self control, and community ties to investigate their mediating roles on the relationship between social anonymity and community quality. Also, discussion quality and information quality are used to measure online community quality. The results of this study show that social anonymity is directly related to discussion quality but not related to information quality. As for the mediating effects, self expression, self control and community ties are all shown to have strong mediating effects on the social anonymity and community quality relationship.