participation context lacked strong theoretical foundation.
To address these research gaps, this study will
focus on the communication factors from the users’
perspective. Specifically, this study will address the
question: “Which factors affect the extent to which a user
shares his/her information with a system developer?” The
communication competence framework, which will be
discussed in the following section, may provide an answer
to this question. This framework attempts to find the
elements
of
competency
in
an
individual’s
communications. The following sections present the
literature on communication competence and its elements.
Communication Competence Framework The term communicative competence was coined
by Dell Hymes, a respected socio-linguist. He posited that
communication competence is a combination of the
knowledge of communication and the ability to
communicate. Hymes [16] also incorporated social rules
and norms into the communicative competence
framework, as competent communicators need to learn to
adapt his/her communications to the rules and norms in
the society to which they belong in order to communicate
effectively and appropriately. Hymes’ conceptualization
of competence was criticized for lacking detailed
formulation from which future researchers could work.
Later, to clarify Hymes’ formulation, Wiemann and
Backlund [41] reviewed the work in communication
competence
and
suggested
that
communication
competence is a combination of the knowing what to say and the knowing how to communicate. The concept of
communication competence has been extended over time
in order to clarify its definition. While many other
researchers focused only on the communicator’s
knowledge and skills, Spitzberg and Cupach [37, 38]
added another important element of competence,
motivation to communicate, and posited that there should
be three components of communication competence:
cognitive knowledge (i.e., subject and knowledge how to
communicate) , communication skills (or communication
competence), and motivation. Motivation is the impetus
for communicators to transfer their knowledge into
behaviors they actually perform. In other words, “an
individual must desire to interact competently with a
