The impact of personal characteristics and participatory motivation of virtual communities of practice users to the participating behaviour in the context of Wenger's vcop theory

In this study, the factors determining the sharing and participation, that is, to take part in the practice by the community members in the community, in the virtual communities of practice which are established by the social media users are discussed. This thesis study is prepared by assuming that the personal characteristics and the motivation of participatory behaviour of virtual communities of practice has an impact on social networks of the community users. Accordingly, in the study, a model was developed that explains the impact of personality types and lifestyles from personal characteristics which affects community identity and the participatory behaviour and the impact of participating motivation together in the virtual communities of practice. In the developed model, it was aimed to investigate the impact of factors determined on the community identity and the taking part in the practice as well as the relationship between community identity and taking part in the practice by referring to Wenger's VCoP Theory.