Research On Factors Of Users' Continuance Intention Toward Government Microblog

Recently,social media platforms,as a group of internet-based applications that build on the technological foundations of Web 2.0 have flooded all walks of life around the world,with unprecedented speed and scale.More and more organizations are employing social media to practice their management.And social media has been proven to be of great value in business,work and life.Naturally,government agencies across different levels are experimenting with launching government social media(GSM)to socialize government services,processes,and data,and government micro-blog is a typical example among GSM.In China,government micro-blog is playing a more and more important role in facilitating the communication with,listening to and collect crowd-sourcing from the public.It has revolutionized the management of government affairs.Users' continued engagement and the resulting data of user' relationship and users-generated content are important for social media and are the sources for the value of it.The idea can also be applied to government micro-blogging.The studies related to information systems uses figure out that knowing the formation mechanism of continuance intention is important for the success for information systems.However,there is nearly no research investigating such question of government micro-blogging.Thus,this dissertation intends to fill the gap and inform government agencies the managerial implications.Based on the government micro-blog practices in China,the research question regarding what is the formation mechanism of users' continuance intention is proposed.Through the theoretical lens of the uses and gratifications theory(UGT)and based on reviewing related references and conducting interview,we identify the gratification factors(i.e.,information seeking,social activity,content consumption,intelligence-giving,and network externality)that stimulate users' continuance intention toward GSM.Furthermore,we draw upon the stimulus–organism–response(SOR)framework to develop a model for exploring the effects of gratification factors(as stimulus in the SOR framework)on individuals' online experiences(i.e.,flow experience and sense of belonging)and,subsequently,their continuance intention.The results of our survey of 336 government micro-blog residents indicate that usage continuance intention is in part determined by gratification factors.Furthermore,the associations among gratification factors and users' continuance intention can be mediated by the sense of belonging and flow experience.At last,we summarize the research and point out the future research direction,and based on the research results,we inform the government agencies practical inspiration in the promotion and operation of the government micro-blog.