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This paper aims to explore how the lived experience of online communities’ participants makes these communities evolve into online communities of practice (CoPs).

A quantitative research design was used among backpackers. Data on backpackers’ lived experience and interactions were collected.

The results suggest a process of how online communities can become genuine online CoPs, thanks to participants’ lived experience. Their activities (information search, perceived benefits and electronic word-of-mouth) result in knowledge sharing and creation. The findings also emphasize the roles of expertise and offline interactions as process moderators.

This study focuses on one specific practice to conduct the research (i.e. backpacking), which limits the generalizability of the results.

This study offers several implications for companies and stakeholders. First, it describes how the lived experience transforms online communities into CoPs and helps stakeholders obtain knowledge for customers to innovate. Second, it analyzes the processes of participation, interaction and promotion to share and create knowledge for customers to increase stakeholders’ competitiveness. Third, this study integrates members’ offline interactions by highlighting their potential effects on tacit knowledge loss in online CoPs.

The literature posits that online communities may evolve into online CoPs through a three-stage hierarchical path, but the underlying mechanisms and members’ contributions to the process have been largely neglected in the literature.