Urban Residents’ Social Support In Cyberspace And Its Influencing Factors

The Internet has greatly changed the way people communication, interpersonal communication beyond constraints of time and space, in a broader platform. Social support is a widespread social interaction behavior, the ’internet social support’ means the social support in the virtual world. This study explores the social support and its influencing factors of urban residents in the virtual world. From the perspective of social capital theory, we use individual social capital (personal networking scale in the virtual world) and the collective social capital (social trust) to explain the social support in cyberspace. In this study, social support is divided into instrumental support and emotional support, social trust is divided into the offline social trust and the online social trust. Research found that Internet users can generally get social support in the virtual world, it has no bigger difference between instrumental support and emotional support, women can access more emotional support than man.In the explain of internet social support, we break through the previous social network theory’s explanation logic, with the social capital theory to explain social support in cyberspace. The study found that social trust has positively predict the social support in virtual world, the offline social trust has more influence on instrumental support, and the online social trust has more impact on emotional support. With the below logic we explain social support:We view the social support as a kind of social cooperation behavior in cyberspace, social trust has a positive role in promoting social cooperation. This explanation is consistent with Putnam and Coleman’s discussion on trust, our experience research confirmed the theoretical explanatory power. At the same time, the size of individual social network in cyberspace has partly influenced the internet social support, and it has a bigger influence on emotional support.Overall, the social trust has significantly affected individual social support in cyberspace. The size of individual social network has partly influence on internet social support. The study has confirmed the social capital theory’s logic.