Developing a Sense of Virtual Community Measure

Abstract

Sense of virtual community is an important feature of virtual communities. This study develops a sense of virtual community (SOVC) measure, building off the strengths of a widely used measure of sense of community (SOC) for face-to-face communities. Although there is overlap between the senses of community for face-to-face and virtual communities, there are significant differences. The new SOVC measure is compared to the SOC measure on 265 members of seven online groups, explaining at least 7% more of the variance from exchanging support and member identification. This study represents an important step in developing a valid measure of SOCV.