Configurational Analysis of Knowledge Diffusion Quality in Online Knowledge Communities from a Socio-Technical Systems Perspective: Integrating fsQCA and NCA

Online knowledge communities serve as critical infrastructures for innovation, yet prior research relying on net-effect logic has struggled to explain why similar communities differ in knowledge diffusion quality or reveal how multiple conditions synergistically produce high-quality outcomes. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory and dimensionalizing the DeLone and McLean (D&M) model into knowledge, technical, and social subsystems, this study adopts a configurational perspective to examine the joint influence of seven conditions on knowledge diffusion quality. Using data from 307 users and integrating fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with necessary condition analysis (NCA), we found that no single condition is individually necessary for achieving high-quality outcomes, highlighting the nonlinear and substitutable nature of socio-technical systems. Three equifinal pathways were identified: demand–response synergy, trust-mediated integration, and emotion–utility coupling, alongside four pathways leading to the absence of high-quality outcomes, demonstrating causal asymmetry. Notably, a dual-sided configurational pattern emerged: information utility quality serves as a core condition across all high-quality pathways, while service empathy appears as a core-absent condition in the majority of non-high-quality pathways. This study advances socio-technical systems theory by operationalizing equifinality, conjunctural causality, and subsystem interdependence, and offers practical implications for platform governance.