Why and when do users reciprocate assistance in user innovation communities? While the link between receiving and providing assistance is at the core of Social Exchange Theory (SET), evidence in communities of users remains mixed. To clarify this issue, we zoom into the cognitive underpinnings of individual exchanges. Specifically, all interactions happen in a knowledge space idiosyncratic to the community – a conceptual space. We conceptualize help as a peer-facilitated exploration of the conceptual space, and the conceptual distance covered as the mechanism linking the reception to the provision of assistance. The longer the distance travelled, the more inquirers will assist other users because of feelings of obligation and lower barriers to help. Travelling longer distances in the conceptual space should be more conducive to the provision of assistance when the original inquiry is more typical to the communities’ conceptual core – which facilitates reusability of the knowledge for newly encountered inquiries – and at earlier stages of the community lifecycle – when knowledge is more valuable. We test our hypotheses applying natural language processing techniques to data from 12,068 unique inquiries posted in the forums of a large online 3D printing platform across more than three years. Our findings are largely in line with our expectations and are robust to different model specifications. Our research has important implications for theory on social exchanges generally, and for our understanding of exchanges in user innovation communities specifically.
