An Empirical Study On Determinants Of User Acceptance Of Social Networking Service (SNS)

The most popular product in the Internet industry is Social Networking Service (SNS), such as renren, kaixin001, Facebook. Generally speaking, SNS is based on the theory of "Six Degrees of Separation", providing the service of expanding individuals' networking circles through their friends and friends of theirs. Since SNS has developed for 3 years in China, it is still treated as an innovation product, facing the problem of user acceptance. SNS providers has to understand about whether users would like to accept SNS, and why they accept it, so that SNS enterprises can provide products and services which can match users' needs better. The objective of this research is to find the significant elements influencing users' adoption of SNS and provide suggestions to Internet enterprises about how to improve SNS. So there are important theory and practice meanings for the reseach on the users' acceptance of SNS.The model of determinants of user acceptance of SNS is proposed according to Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), User Satisfaction of IS and Service Quality theory. The model includes perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU) and social influence (SI) as direct factors influencing behavioral intention (BI), and system quality, information quality and service quality as external variables of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use indirectly influencing BI. Experience and personal innovativeness are moderation variables influencing the relations of PU and BI, PEOU and BI, and SI and BI. The study adopted Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to validate the proposed conceptual model. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) TAM can be applied to SNS environment. The basic conclusions of TAM that PEOU has a positeve effect on PEOU, and PEOU, PU and SI influence BI together are well validated in the thesis.(2) The external variables include system quality, information quality and service quality. System quality has a positive effect on PEOU. Information quality and service quality both influence PU, and information quality has a more significant effect on PU than service quality.(3) Perceived beliefs have full mediation effect on the relations of external variables and BI. The details are as follows: system quality indirectly influences BI through PEOU; information quality indirectly influences BI through PU; service quality indirectly influences BI through PU.(4) The relation of PEOU and BI is moderated by experice. Personal Innovativeness has moderation effects both on the relation of PEOU and BI, and the one of SI and BI.