Does Discretionary Internet-based Behavior of Instructors Contribute to Student Satisfaction?: An Empirical Study on ‘Cybercivism’

Although there is empirical research that supports the relationship between employee citizenship behaviors and positive measures of organizational effectiveness, little is known about how this link performs over the Internet in educational settings. This study examines the effects of discretionary Internet-based behavior of 270 instructors using e-resources on satisfaction with the teaching service of 15,367 students at a Spanish university. The argument developed is that these voluntary Internet-based behaviors, operationalized as ‘cybercivism’ (i.e., care and help for university’s information system and its student-users), comprise contextual activities that ameliorate some of the recognized deficits in virtual contexts, support the teaching-learning process across the Internet and, hence, increase student satisfaction. Previously, the paper argues on the uniqueness of cybercivism as compared with conventional citizenship behavior by contrasting the experiential differences between face-to-face and virtual interactions. Confirmatory factor analysis results supported the distinctiveness of cybercivism. Unlike conventional citizenship behavior, individual cybercivism was also found to be positively associated with student satisfaction with teaching service as rated in each university center. Since this positive impact mainly occurred in a virtual environment, the results suggest that discretionary Internet-based behavior may contribute to student satisfaction ‘on the other side of the Web.’