Spontaneity vs. suppression: Differential impacts of platform types on user value co-creation behavior in online...

User participation in value co-creation is a crucial guarantee for the successful operation of online brand communities. Based on the Cognition-Affect-Conation (C-A-C) theoretical framework, this study constructs a theoretical model of the influencing factors of user value co-creation behavior in online brand communities from both cognitive and affective perspectives. The model is empirically tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), and multi-group analysis is employed to explore the differential effects across different types of platforms. The research findings reveal that information quality, interaction quality, and incentive mechanisms all have a significantly positive impact on user satisfaction, which in turn positively influences both autonomous value co-creation and sponsored value co-creation. User satisfaction plays a mediating role in this process. Meanwhile, normative mechanisms only exert a significantly positive effect on users' autonomous value co-creation and have no significant impact on sponsored value co-creation. Furthermore, there are differentiated effects between third-party platforms and official platforms in terms of users' autonomous value co-creation and sponsored value co-creation. Specifically, for autonomous value co-creation, the positive effects of information quality, interaction quality, and incentive mechanisms are more significant in third-party platform communities compared to official platform communities. Conversely, for sponsored value co-creation, the positive influence of perceptual factors is more significant in official platform communities than in third-party platform communities. These findings deepen the theoretical understanding of the formation mechanisms behind user value co-creation in different types of online brand communities and provide practical insights and references for the healthy and sustainable development of such communities.