Impact of Personality Traits on Online Knowledge Sharing Behavior among Social Media Users: A Study with Special Reference to Undergraduates of Public Universities in Sri Lanka

Abstract

As a part of society, undergraduates use social media for educational purposes. Previous studies have investigated the impact of using social media by university students to share knowledge among others. However most of the studies investigated the effect of personality traits on knowledge sharing behavior in social media in Western context. There is a vacuum of studies in a non-western context. To fill this gap, current study is conducted to investigate the effect of personality traits on knowledge sharing behavior in social media among undergraduates in national universities in the Sri Lankan context. Perceived trust plaid the role of moderator in this study. This study was conducted as a cross-sectional survey. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select the sample of 322 university undergraduates which were used in the final analysis. Regression analysis was used to test the research hypotheses with the support from SPSS 26. It was found that the big five personality traits are associated with the online knowledge sharing behavior among university students. Further, study found that personality traits (extraversion, openness, emotional stability, consciousness) lead to knowledge sharing behavior while undergraduates didn’t consider trustworthiness as a major factor in online knowledge sharing behavior. It was suggested that students should enhance their personality traits to enhance effective knowledge sharing employing social media. To encourage online knowledge sharing, policymakers should create trustworthy social media platforms among university undergraduates.