How does user participation affect firm innovation performance: The moderating effects of open innovation community environments and user individual factors

Open innovation communities (OICs) effectively facilitate user participation in product development and production by establishing collaborative platforms and incentive frameworks, serving as a crucial channel for organizations to enhance innovation performance. Although current research has confirmed the advantageous effects of user participation, the contextual constraints of its underlying mechanisms require further examination. This study formulates a dual moderating theoretical model to examine the effect of user participation on firm innovation performance, empirically validating it through primary survey data and multiple regression analysis. The findings demonstrate that (1) user participation significantly improves firm innovation performance; (2) among environmental factors, both community norms and community atmosphere exert positive moderating effects; (3) among individual factors, self-efficacy shows a positive moderating effect, whereas the moderating impact of outcome expectations is not supported. This study expands the theoretical framework of user participation and provides practical suggestions for firms to improve participation methods in OICs.