Research On Sharing Behavior In Social Media From Social Capital Perspective

With the increasing popularity of mobile Internet,more and more researchers begin to pay close attention to social media.For users,they are not only willing to use and share information on these platforms,but also regard social media as a part of daily life.Based on this phenomenon,this paper selects the most popular one,WeChat,as an example and combines Theory of Reasoned Action with Social Capital Theory.From the theoretical perspectives of social capital theory,this paper aims to explore how individuals' structural,relational and cognitive social capital impact sharing behaviors on social media.Based on a review on the literatures,theory analysis and user interviews,this paper divided the research question into four types and put forward 11 research hypotheses on college students as study sample.Through online survey,the research collected 629 valid samples and examined all hypotheses with statistical tool SPSS and AMOS.The conclusion is summed up as follow:(1)Intention to share is highly correlated to sharing behavior,and also has significant effect to sharing behavior.(2)Social capital theory proved to be applied to social media.From perspective of social capital theory,the structure,relational and cognitive dimensions all have significant effect to sharing behavior.According to their contribution impact,relational ranks first,structural ranks second and cognitive social capital ranks last.(3)The structural and cognitive social capital both produce a significant impact on the sharing intention through relational social media.(4)Specifically,in the structural aspect,social interaction ties ranks first and centrality second;in the cognitive aspect,shared vision ranks first and shared language second;in the relational aspect,the rank order is trust,identification and reciprocity.