Online Social Network Adoption and Individual Benefits

Literature indicated that there are reasons (or benefits) for people to adopt social network, in this study, there are three sub-factors of individual benefits including 2.1.2.1 relationship maintenance and development, 2.1.2.2 information and knowledge sharing, and 2.1.2.3 use satisfaction. And hypotheses are also presented as follow.

2.1.2.1 Relationship maintenance and development

In an online social network individuals are consciously able to construct an online representation of self, such as online dating profiles and online games (e.g. LoL- League of Legends, WoW- World of Warcraft, and StarCraft). To address the concept in more depth, the SNS has been developing an important research context for scholars to investigate processes of impression management, self-presentation, and relationship performance (Boyd and Ellison, 2008). The extent to which portraits are authentic or playful varies across sites; both social and technological forces shape user practices (Donelan et al., 2010). Skog (2005) found that the status feature on LunarStorm strongly influenced how people behaved and what they choose to reveal profiles that present one’s status as measured by activity (e.g. sending messages) and indicators of authenticity (e.g. using a real photo instead of a drawing).

Another aspect of self-presentation is the articulation of relationship links, which serve as identity markers for the profile owner. Donath (2007) noted that MySpace spammers leverage people’s willingness to connect to interesting people to find targets for their spam. Fono and Raynes-Goldie (2007) described users’ understandings regarding public displays of connections and how the Friending function can operate as a catalyst for social drama, in their examination of LiveJournal friendship. In listing user motivations for Friending, Boyd (2006)

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point out that friends on SNSs are not the same as friends in the everyday sense; instead, friends provide context by offering users an imagined audience to guide behavioral norms.

Other work in this area has examined the use of Friendster Testimonials as self-presentational devices (Boyd and Heer, 2006) and the extent to which the attractiveness of one’s friends (as indicated by Facebook’s wall feature) impacts impression formation (Walther et al., 2008).

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2.1.2.2 Information and knowledge sharing

Many researchers use the terms, knowledge and information, interchangeably, although the term knowledge sharing is generally used more often than information sharing. However, researchers tend to use the term “information sharing” to refer to sharing with others that occurs in experimental studies in which participants are given lists of information, manuals, or programs (Wang and Noe, 2010). The Internet has been fostering the development of SNS that aims at facilitating collaboration by providing an environment for mutual sharing and interaction. A collaborative process in such an environment involves intensive online knowledge discovery and knowledge sharing between collaborators, such as knowledge consumers and knowledge contributors (Yang and Chen, 2008).

The emergent SNSs over the past decade have stimulated research interests by academia and practitioners. Zhang and Tanniru (2005) built an agent-based model for virtual learning communities, the results of a series of comparison experiments indicated that every member tends to be active in the initial stage. When the community reaches a reasonable size, each participant is important and function together to form a healthy and stable population. Wasko and Faraj (2005) found that knowledge sharing has been a motivation for participation in virtual communities. Prior studies have provided evidence demonstrating the importance of information and knowledge sharing in enhancing the performance, and provide mechanisms to support the information and knowledge sharing on OSN.

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2.1.2.3 Use satisfaction

As the number and types of social networking sites continue to grow and compete for users' attention, the question of how to make users satisfied with their use of social network becomes a critical issue. Satisfaction is defined as a pleasing experience with the social networking experience in terms of technology and social interaction. Wixom and Todd (2005) found that user satisfaction and intention to use technology is significantly affected when concurrently considering both the perceptions of the quality of the shared information as well as the quality of the technology. SNSs want members to use their sites, they at the same time want users to keep using, communicating and sharing information. In order for this to happen, users must be satisfied with their experience. Part of that experience involves not also the technology, but the interactivity or perceived interactivity associated with the site in terms of the message, personal relationships, social exchange and control. Satisfaction has been used in a number of research studies to examine a user's positive attitude toward website experiences (Szymanski and Hise, 2000; Dalcher and Shine, 2003; Wixom and Todd, 2005;

Chiu et al., 2006).

Table 2-1 shows a review of literature (Ellison et al., 2007; Valenzuela et al., 2009; Shi et al., 2010; Beaudry et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2010), it has shown that factors have used to examine the use willingness of SNSs, IT use, and social capital which includes multidimensional construct: civic participation, political engagement, life satisfaction, and social trust, etc.

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Table 2-1: The Studies of Social Capital on SNSs

Authors Impacts Results

Ellison et al.

(2007)

SNSs;

Social capital

N= 286; Facebook was implicated to develop and maintain bridging social capital at college; Low satisfaction and low self-esteem gained in bridging social capital if used Facebook more intensely; Bonding social capital was significant to the intensity with students used Facebook;

General internet use was significant to maintain social capital.

Valenzuela et al.

(2009)

SNSs;

Social capital

N=2603; Facebook use had a positive relationships with students’ life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation; There were positive and significant associations between Facebook variables and social capital.

Shi et al.

(2010)

SNSs;

Social capital

N=125; Both disconfirmations of maintaining offline

contacts and entertainment had strong impact on satisfaction;

The disconfirmation of information seeking influenced satisfaction less than above two factors.

Beaudry et al.

(2010)

IT use;

Performance

N= 249; IT use was positively significant to information (seeking and sharing), negotiation (with clients), and figure head (information with people).

Kim et al.

(2010)

SNSs;

Social capital

N=589; The total results showed that use SNSs had high significant to seeking social support and seeking

information; Attitude toward the SNSs was significantly related seeking friends in US, and also had a significant to seeking social support in Korea.

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2.1.2.4 Technology Acceptance Model

According the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989) (see Figure 2-1), two particular beliefs: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, were primary two elements for computer acceptance behaviors; TAM argued that computer usage was determined by behavioral intention to use, which was affected by the attitude toward ease of use and perceived usefulness toward use intention and actual use.

SOURCE: Davis (1989) 

Figure 2-1: Technology Acceptance Model

The research thesis adopts the concept of TAM and regards that SNS adoption will be influencing the individual benefits and therefore the first hypothesis is formed as follow.

Model1 H1(abc): Online social network adoption is significantly related to individual benefits.

Model2 H6(abc): Online social network adoption is significantly related to individual benefits.

(Individual benefits are relationship maintenance and development, information and

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knowledge sharing, and use satisfaction)

Different from the TAM’s argument, the research thesis argues that behavioral intention is influenced by psychological status that mainly includes various types of emotion, such as inspired, upset, active, hostile, etc. While a review of literature has shown that factors have used to examine the use willingness of SNSs, IT use, and social capital (Ellison et al., 2007;

Valenzuela et al., 2009; Shi et al., 2010; Beaudry et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2010), they at the same time paid a limited attention to the influence of emotion. Therefore, the research thesis regards the emotion as one of the antecedents that affects the SNS adoption toward individual benefits.

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