Understanding The Continuance Intention To Use Social Media In China

Since the start of 21 st century,information system(IS)continuance behavior has attracted the attention of many scholars and they inspected it using numerous IS behavioral approaches.Interestingly,a very little amount of research has been done pertinent to continuance intention of mobile instant messaging and mobile chat services.Information system(IS)scholars proposed to examine continuance intention from different perspectives such as investigating it for different kinds of social media(e.g.,WeChat).The primary motivation of the present study is to offer a research model which particularly aims;(1)to examine impact of users’ four personality trait factors namely,personal innovativeness,face consciousness,need for uniqueness,and ambiguity intolerance on hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions,and which personality factor has its greater effect than others;and(2)to investigate the relative effects of hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions on WeChat users’ continuance intention to use,and which value perception contributes more to continuance intention to use.Despite the enormous increase in active users of WeChat,research examining users’ continuance intention based on personality drivers and value perceptions is very scarce.To fill this gap,the present study aims to offer a research model which examines the role of four personality drivers,namely,(1)personal innovativeness,(2)face consciousness,(3)need for uniqueness and(4)ambiguity intolerance in WeChat users’ hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions.Further,our model examines how hedonic and utilitarian value perceptions influence continuance intention.A survey-based methodology was adopted to collect data for hypothesis testing in the current study.The subjects were recruited from two sources,including the major students sample from two Chinese universities and a minor sample from the author’s personal social contacts in his social media and email accounts.College students are appropriate subjects to this study because they are not only the primary users of WeChat but also are the current major population of several popular social applications in China.We used convenience sampling technique to collect data.The participants were undergraduate and master’s degree students.The initial instrument was developed in English and then back-translated to Chinese.Back–to–back translation method was employed to ensure linguistic equivalence between two versions.Data were collected from 562 active users of WeChat.Structural equation modeling was employed to test study hypotheses.We used two-step statistical analysis approach in Structural Equation Modeling(SEM),where we first analyze reliability and validity by measurement model and then path analysis by a structural model.The basic purpose of this two-step approach is to establish reliability and validity of measures before testing for their structural relationships.Structural Equation Modeling(SEM)and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)were performed by using SPSS(IBM)and AMOS(version 18.0).The findings reveal that personal innovativeness had a positive effect on users’ hedonic value.Face consciousness and need for uniqueness were found be a strong predictor of both hedonic and utilitarian value.A negative association was found between ambiguity intolerance and utilitarian value.The hedonic and utilitarian value positively affects continuance intention.The present study contributes in following ways.First,this study develops and tests a model that simultaneously examines the role of personality traits and value perceptions in determining continuance intention.Second,the role of face consciousness and the need for uniqueness as personality traits in technology adoption filled a sound research void in the field.Third key contribution stems from the selection of Chinese sample which empirically validates the application of existing IS theories across the borders in emerging Asian economy.Fourth and last,this study takes first step to empirically test users’ continuance intention to use WeChat as a mobile chat app.Altogether,this study sheds light on users’ continued use behavior for mobile chatting apps in the Chinese context.This research study offers the theoretical and practical implications for IS scholars and practitioners and close by acknowledging the limitations and future research direction.