Does Trust Promote More Teamwork? Modeling Online Game Players' Teamwork Using Team Experience as a Moderator

Abstract

The need for teamwork has grown significantly in today's organizations. Especially for online game communities, teamwork is an important means of online game players' engagement. This study aims to investigate the impacts of trust on players' teamwork with affective commitment and normative commitment as mediators. Furthermore, this research includes team experience as a moderator to compare the difference between different player groups. A model was proposed and tested on 296 online game players' data using structural equation modeling. Findings revealed that team experience moderated the relationship between trust and teamwork. The results indicated that trust promotes more teamwork only for players with high experience through affective commitment than those who with low experience. Implications of the findings are discussed.