| Entrepreneurs play an invaluable role in society, developing business and social enterprises that contribute to the economic (cf., Busenitz, West, Shepherd, Nelson, Chandler, and Zacharakis, 2003) and social vitality (cf., McAuley and Fillis, 2005) of communities. Therefore, it is essential that research addresses the issues associated with entrepreneurial survival and advancement. Social media has the potential to support entrepreneurial activities, enhancing networking, marketing, and capital generation. However, little is known about entrepreneurs' intentions regarding social media. This study seeks to make a contribution to the literature by examining the potential influences associated with entrepreneurs' intentions to use or reject social media in their entrepreneurial activities, using a self-administered survey to examine the factors that influence entrepreneurs' adoption intentions. Drawing on technology-adoption literature, five factors, including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived competitive pressure, perceived privacy risk, and trust in social media, were assessed as potential influences. The study revealed that, although the combined predictive model accounted for thirty-four percent (R2 = .342) of the variance in entrepreneurial intention to adopt social media, none of these factors significantly (p < .05) affected entrepreneurs' intentions to adopt Web 2.0 social media. Only perceived competitive usefulness, a hybrid variable created from perceived usefulness and perceived competitive pressure, in order to address multicollinearity issues, had a significant (p < .01) effect on entrepreneurs' social media adoption intentions. Importantly, this study showed that entrepreneurs were not affected by privacy risks or trust issues associated with use of social media. However, correlational and hierarchical linear regression analyses of sixteen ancillary variables identified six potential factors to be tested in a future study. The results of the current study should assist educators, developing curricula that will foster more effective use of social media by entrepreneurs; government agencies, designing effectual policies related to social media; and community organizations, developing programs to support entrepreneurship. |
