What Drives Continuance Intention towards Social Media? Social Influence and Identity Perspectives

Athapol Ruangkanjanases,Shih-Chih Chen,Yenchun Jim Wu,Shu-Ling Hsu,Jo-Yu Chang

doi:10.3390/su12177081

Abstract

With the growth of social media communities, people now use this new media to engage in many interrelated activities. As a result, social media communities have grown into popular and interactive platforms among users, consumers and enterprises. In the social media era of high competition, increasing continuance intention towards a specific social media platform could transfer extra benefits to such virtual groups. Based on the expectation-confirmation model (ECM), this research proposed a conceptual framework incorporating social influence and social identity as key determinants of social media continuous usage intention. The research findings of this study highlight that: (1) the social influence view of the group norms and image significantly affects social identity; (2) social identity significantly affects perceived usefulness and confirmation; (3) confirmation has a significant impact on perceived usefulness and satisfaction; (4) perceived usefulness and satisfaction have positive effects on usage continuance intention. The results of this study can serve as a guide to better understand the reasons for and implications of social media usage and adoption.

Highlights

People use various forms of online social media to carry out many different activities of social interaction
Social media community users have the ability to increase the economic value of such websites [62]
This study explored the usage intentions in relation to social media communities based on the concepts of social influence and social identity

Summary

Introduction

People use various forms of online social media to carry out many different activities of social interaction. Companies and other organizations are making use of social media communities to promote their brands with related fan pages being very common. The operators of social media communities work to attract more people by offering interesting and plentiful content, as well as continuous, uninterrupted interactions, as such efforts can attract more users, and increase the related organizations market profile. Social media community operators aim to improve the contents in virtual communities to attract more users, as this would allow the community to be viable and sustainable viability, increasing its business activities and value. As the Internet has evolved over time in different forms and applications of media, it has changed traditional forms of interpersonal interaction and created new communication bridges among people, such as online groups

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Conclusion