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Online communities are new social structures dependent on modern information technology, and they face equally modern challenges. Although satisfied members regularly consume content, it is considerably harder to coax them to contribute new content and help recruit others because they face unprecedented social comparison and criticism. We propose that engagement—a concept only abstractly alluded to in information systems research—is the key to active participation in these unique sociotechnical environments. We constructed and tested a framework that demonstrates what engagement is, where it comes from, and how it powerfully explains both knowledge contribution and word of mouth. Our results show that members primarily contribute to and revisit an online community from a sense of engagement. Nonetheless, word of mouth is partly influenced by prior satisfaction. Therefore, engagement and …