A Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Model for Understanding Social Commerce Adoption

Yogesh K Dwivedi,Elvira Ismagilova,Prianka Sarker,Anand Jeyaraj,Yassine Jadil,Laurie Hughes

doi:10.1007/s10796-021-10172-2

Abstract

Social commerce (s-commerce) has gained prominence with advances in social media and social networking technologies over the last decade. Prior research has employed diverse theoretical perspectives to understand and explain consumer behavior within s-commerce but has also produced inconsistent results. This study integrates different theoretical perspectives including trust, social support, and social presence. The research portrays an integrated research model involving factors that impact behavioral intention and use behavior of s-commerce consumers whilst synthesizing prior empirical findings. A meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) method was used to synthesize 189 findings reported in 68 s-commerce studies and to analyze the structural model. Our findings show that trust and informational support have positive effects on behavioral intention while trust and emotional support have positive effects on use behavior. Furthermore, our findings highlight that behavioral intention influences use behavior and mediates the effect of trust and informational support on use behavior. The implications for research and practice are discussed in detail.

Highlights

The development of the internet and e-commerce has made the purchasing of goods and services online become ubiquitous for many people
The findings demonstrate that a combination of perspectives from trust and social support theories was successful in predicting behavioral intention and use behavior of consumers in the context of s-commerce
This study examined an integrated research model that combined perspectives from trust, social support, and social presence to examine the factors that influenced behavioral intention and use behavior in the s-commerce context

Summary

Introduction

The development of the internet and e-commerce has made the purchasing of goods and services online become ubiquitous for many people. S-commerce is defined as a “socially-driven interaction process pertinent to purchasing a product or service using quality of social media” S-commerce can be considered as a new stream of e-commerce, where users are able to participate, communicate, Inf Syst Front interact and purchase or sell products and services (Abed et al, 2015; Ali et al, 2020; Hajli et al, 2014). S-commerce features within e-commerce websites have allowed two-way communications between users, leading to improved shopping experiences allowing users to share their knowledge and interaction across their social networks (Hajli, 2014, 2020)

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