Research on the Impact of Implicit Contracts on User Knowledge Contribution in Open Innovation Communities

Open innovation communities (OICs) have been expanding the scope of enterprises’ innovation activities, and their effective functioning hinges on the ongoing knowledge contributions from users. However, the research on the impact of contractual governance mechanisms on users’ knowledge-contribution behaviors has yet to be further explored. In this study, we provide a comprehensive definition of implicit contracts in OICs, clarify their dimensions, investigate their impact on users’ knowledge contribution, and explore how users’ network positions moderate these effects. Subsequently, we employ a questionnaire survey combined with web crawling to collect user data and empirically test the theoretical hypotheses. The results demonstrate that both user-user implicit contracts (i.e., user reciprocity, user trust, and user recognition) and user-community implicit contracts (i.e., community incentives, community trust, and community support) significantly and positively affect user knowledge contribution. Furthermore, users’ structural holes exert a significant positive moderating effect on these relationships. Notably, the moderating effect of network centrality is only significant in the influence of user-community implicit contracts, and not significant in the relationship between user-user implicit contracts and user knowledge contribution. The insights derived from this study offer valuable practical guidance for effectively operating and managing OICs.