A Life Cycle Model of Virtual Communities

The importance of virtual communities is well established in information systems (IS) research. A significant number of studies on this topic have focused on investigating motivators and inhibitors of members´ participation. However, virtual communities are not static, but dynamically evolve, and often ´die´ to be replaced by other virtual communities. To date, there is very little research that investigates the life cycle of virtual communities. The goal of this research is to identify influences that could explain this phenomenon. We summarize our insights in the form of a conceptual model.