The sense of belonging to a community is a basic human need that impacts an individuals behavior, long-term engagement, and job satisfaction, as revealed by research in disciplines such as psychology, healthcare, and education. Despite much research on how to retain developers in Open Source Software projects and other virtual, peer-production communities, there is a paucity of research investigating what might contribute to a sense of belonging in these communities. To that end, we develop a theoretical model that seeks to understand the link between OSS developer motives and a Sense of Virtual Community. We test the model with a dataset collected in the Linux Kernel developer community, using structural equation modeling techniques. Our results for this case study show that intrinsic motivations - social or hedonic motives - are positively associated with a sense of virtual community, but living in an authoritative country and being paid to contribute can reduce the sense of virtual community. Based on these results, we offer suggestions for open source projects to foster a sense of virtual community, with a view to retaining contributors and improving projects sustainability.

翻译：归属感是人类的基本需求，影响着个体的行为、长期投入和工作满意度，心理学、医疗保健和教育等领域的研究已证实了这一点。尽管已有大量关于如何留住开源软件项目及其他虚拟对等生产社区中开发者的研究，但针对哪些因素可能促进这些社区归属感的探究仍显不足。为此，我们构建了一个理论模型，旨在理解开源软件开发者动机与虚拟社区感知之间的关联。我们基于Linux内核开发者社区收集的数据集，采用结构方程模型技术对该模型进行了验证。本案例研究结果表明：内在动机——社交或享乐动机——与虚拟社区感知呈正相关，但生活在威权国家以及因贡献而获得报酬会削弱虚拟社区感知。基于这些发现，我们为开源项目提出培养虚拟社区感知的建议，以期留住贡献者并提升项目的可持续性。