  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.
