Although online communities with a supportive climate encourage members to participate and exchange their information openly and freely, participants may perceive the community to be unsafe without proper control. Do controlling climates also contribute to the accumulation of social capital in online brand communities (OBCs)? The purpose of our study was to investigate how controlling and supportive climates jointly influence community identification, and to examine the mediating effects of social capital and the moderating effects of community age. A conceptual framework was proposed and tested with data collected from an online survey of 481 online brand community members. We found that both controlling and supportive climates had positive effects on social capital (trust and norms of reciprocity), which exerted a partial mediation between community climate and community identification in the OBCs examined. Developing a community climate was particularly effective in generating trust in older communities. This research contributes to the community literature and has important implications for community climate management. We identified the boundary conditions of the community climate-trust association.

中文翻译：

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在线品牌社区气候如何影响社区识别？社会资本的调解

尽管具有支持性气氛的在线社区鼓励成员自由开放地参与和交流信息，但参与者可能会认为，如果没有适当的控制，社区是不安全的。控制气候是否也有助于在线品牌社区（OBC）中积累社会资本？我们的研究目的是调查控制和支持性气候如何共同影响社区认同，并研究社会资本的中介作用和社区年龄的调节作用。提出了一个概念框架，并使用从481个在线品牌社区成员的在线调查中收集的数据进行了测试。我们发现，控制性气候和支持性气候都对社会资本（信任和互惠规范）产生了积极影响，在所研究的OBCs中，这在社区气候和社区认同之间发挥了部分中介作用。营造社区氛围特别有效地赢得了对较老社区的信任。这项研究为社区文献做出了贡献，对社区气候管理具有重要意义。我们确定了社区气候信任协会的边界条件。