Effects of perceived ease of use on SNSs-addiction through psychological dependence, habit: the moderating role of perceived usefulness

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNSs) provide a public platform for communication, interaction, and socialisation. The intention behind conducting this research was to evaluate whether perceived ease of use and related factors influence SNSs addiction and to discover their connection with this excessive use. Theoretically, we developed a model which integrates perceived ease of use with habit and psychological dependence to predict social networking addiction and tested the model among university students in Pakistan. Further, we examined the moderating effect of the perceived usefulness of these connections. The link between perceived ease of use and social networking addiction and psychological dependence is moderated by perceived usefulness. However, perceived usefulness shows an insignificant moderating relationship with habit. This study data was collected online using a Google documents application on a sample of university students in Pakistan. In total, 336 samples were collected and analysed with SPSS version 21. The results show that Pakistani students tend to have higher SNSs addiction because of its perceived ease of use.