Antecedents of relational inertia and information sharing in SNS usage: The moderating role of structural autonomy

Abstract

This research looks at how the structural characteristics of network affect pressure of relational inertia and the behavior to share information through SNS. Also, we tested the moderating effect of the structural autonomy in network, the extent to which a user feels that ties of relationship can be managed in terms of holding important hubs in social network. The data were collected through online survey from 320 members of four online communities of two popular SNS, Facebook and KakaoStory. The findings show that first of all, three out of four constructs we studied as a structural characteristic, cohesiveness, multiplexity, and syncopated complexity had positive impact on relational inertia, and also relational inertia was positively associated with the decrease of information sharing on SNS. Second, the users' structural autonomy on SNS made the decrease of information sharing weaker and also moderated the relationship between relational inertia and decrease of information sharing. This study suggests that even SNS, which enables the relationship building and information sharing through social networking, could bring negative effect depending on the structural characteristics of a user's social network. In this study, we also confirmed the value of structural autonomy on SNS. Actors can benefit from being linked to only the important ties on social network to obtain effective information and social capital from relationships.