Understanding Users' Discontinuance Intentions In Social Networking Platforms:A Dual-Factor Perspective

The global proliferation of social networking platforms(SNP)makes them evolve from a tool for private users to socialize,learn and entertain,into a potent strategic tool reused by various stakeholders such as companies and platform providers.Although materializing the benefits of SNP depends on continued user participation,platform providers are confronting with the loss of users and have been committed to promote continued SNP use by offering new features or improving service quality.However,these strategies appear to be insufficient to inhibit the decline in the number of users.Such trends underscore the urgent need of SNP practitioners to understand the mechanisms underlying users' discontinuance intentions.Extant studies have suggested that continuance and discontinuance intentions are not opposite extremes on the same continuum but can be instigated by different sets of causative mechanisms.Prior continuance models are thus entirely incapable of explaining discontinuance phenomenon.Despite the relevance of studying and managing SNP users'discontinuance intentions,a systematic empirical investigation remains lacking.This thesis draws on the dual-factor theory to conduct three studies to understand how and why discontinuance intentions are formed from both enabling and inhibiting perspectives.According to the dual-factor perspective,Study 1 explored the competing influence of the enabler and the inhibitor on SNP discontinuance intentions.Specifically,Study 1 analyzed how perceived overload and perceived invasion induce regret,leading to SNP discontinuance intentions.Based on extant literature on inertia,Study 1 also examined how inertia is affected by the behavior-,cognition-,and affective-based factors and its inhibiting effect on SNP discontinuance intentions.Considering the technological features of SNP,Study 2 differentiated two types of SNP discontinuance intentions:discontinuance intention to consume and discontinuance intention to provide.Grounded on the stimulus-organism-response framework,Study 2 proposed that environmental stimuli such as social overload,information overload,invasion of privacy and invasion of life all contribute to regret as the internal organism,which in turn drive their discontinuance intentions.Study 2 also analyzed whether alternative attractiveness accentuates the effect of regret on discontinuance intention to consume and discontinuance intention to provide.Moreover,Study 3 further explored the antecedents of the discontinuance inhibitor and its influence on users' discontinuance intentions.Drawing on status quo bias theory,Study 3 argued that transition costs,loss aversion,calculative commitment and affective commitment can lead to inertia and ultimately impede the development of discontinuance intention to consume and to provide.Meanwhile,Study 3 analyzed the potential moderating effect of peer reduction of SNP use on the relationship between inertia and discontinuance intentions.Three hypothesized theoretical models were empirically tested using data from an online survey of domestic WeChat users.The results demonstrated the validity of the regret-inertia dual-factor framework for explaining SNP discontinuance intentions.The originality of this thesis is in three aspects:First,by adopting the dual-factor perspective as a scheme for theoretical integration,this thesis enriches the extant literature on the antecedents to SNP discontinuance intentions.Although prior research has paid considerable attention to enablers,our knowledge about inhibitors is limited.This thesis offers a more detailed explanation of SNP discontinuance phenomenon by concurrently investigating the role of regret and inertia,and thereby provides insights on the emerging SNP discontinuance research.Second,this thesis reveals completely the mechanisms through which the enabler and the inhibitor form and cause users to terminate their SNP participation.The empirical analysis of the influence of regret and inertia on discontinuance intentions and their antecedents offers platform providers with guidance for managing such SNP discontinuance.Third,this thesis reveals the boundary conditions under which the enabler and the inhibitor influence discontinuance intentions.Although users participate in SNP to satisfy their personalized needs,their behavioral intentions are still constrained by the external environment.Study 2 explored the moderating role of alternative attractiveness and proposed that the presence of superior alternative SNP can accentuate the impact of regret on discontinuance intention to consume and to provide.Moreover,Study 3 identified peer reduction of SNP use as a moderator and examines whether it reduce the inhibiting effect of inertia on discontinuance intentions to consume and to provide.The examination of the boundary conditions not only expands the theoretical understanding of how regret and inertia influence users' discontinuance decisions,but also deepens existing literature on SNP discontinuance.