Abstract
The social currency, the existing potential resource in the social networks and communities of an individual, has become more significant in the era of information technology. Meanwhile, the rapid development of Internet service, especially its application on mobile devices, brings many new contents of prosocial behaviors (PBs), which benefits both individuals and communities. Specifically, social currency plays a positive role in promoting PB, forming positive personalities, promoting positive social adaptation, and contributing to human survival and social development. However, the theoretical research in this field still lags far behind the development of practice, and the research on the impact of social currency on PB remains exceedingly scarce. Grounded in the social exchange theory (SET), the present study collects a total of 497 WeChat user questionnaires, constructs a model for the influence mechanism of social currency on PB, and tests the hypothesis through hierarchical regression. According to the results obtained, it was found that the social currency is positively associated with PB, and users with a more social currency are more likely to act prosocially on their own. The PB of an individual is then influenced by the social currency generated through collective self-esteem (CS) so that the perception of CS can be considered as a mediating variable. Moreover, the communication network heterogeneity (CNH) moderates the above relationship, and the degree of heterogeneity will have different effects on the relationship of CS. The obtained conclusions enrich the previous theoretical results of PB and provided new insights for social managers to enhance the prosocial-related behaviors for the group, organization, and society.
Highlights
Powered by advanced technology and the borderless procrastination magnet of social networks, social media usage has increasingly proliferated (Chen et al, 2020; Gong et al, 2020b)
Common method variance (CMV) is the overlap of variation among variables caused by the same data sources, measurement tools, and usage environment, while it does not represent the actual relationship between constructions
To reveal the influence mechanism of prosocial behaviors (PBs) on social networks, the present study constructed a model of the effect of the social currency (SC) of users on PBs in social networks mediated by collective self-esteem (CS) and moderated by the communication network heterogeneity (CNH)
Summary
Powered by advanced technology and the borderless procrastination magnet of social networks, social media usage has increasingly proliferated (Chen et al, 2020; Gong et al, 2020b). A user of WeChat (i.e., one of the most popular social media platforms of the world, like WhatsApp and Facebook) has his profile photo plastered with a mask to remind himself/herself and advise others to protect well-during COVID-19. Another example, “a cup of milk tea in autumn” has recently become popular among WeChat Moments (i.e., a social platform provided rich media functions; Zhang et al, 2017). Existing studies have explored the research on the implicit association between Facebook users and PBs, and the Facebook users may be changing their relationship with social networks (Ferenczi et al, 2017; Villacampa et al, 2018)
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