The effect of regulatory focus on customer citizenship behavior in a virtual brand community: The role of online self-presentation and community identification

Customer citizenship behavior (CCB) in virtual brand communities is a topic of increasing importance in marketing management research. This type of behavior plays a critical role in the improvement of enterprises' marketing capabilities. In this study, we draw on regulatory focus theory—along with the perspectives of self-presentation and regulatory fit in relation to social identity—to construct and test a model that investigates both the main effects of regulatory foci (promotion and prevention) and the indirect effects of online self-presentation and community identification on CCB. The empirical results based on our online survey between 310 individual members of an well-known online-community in China demonstrate: (1) a promotion focus exerts a positive influence on CCB while a prevention focus exerts a negative impact; (2) the desire for online self-presentation mediates the association between regulatory foci and CCB; and (3) community identification moderates the relationship between regulatory foci and the desire for online self-presentation, as well as the mediation effect. These results have substantial implications for studying CCB within virtual brand communities.