Shaking leaves to find root, observing waves to seek source：Empirical research on the antecedents of social media users’ behavioral intention

• Main Authors: XIE, XING-ZHENG, 謝興政
• Other Authors: TSAI, NIANN-CHUNG
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/624tgr

博士 === 世新大學 === 傳播研究所(含博士學位學程) === 107 === The popularity of mobile Internet has provided fertile soil for the development of social media. In recent years, due to the characteristics of interaction and user-generated content, social media has been rapidly spreading around the world, which causes that users gradually become dependent on social media and have strong stickiness. Due to the block of Internet, some social media platforms could not be used in China, which offers a superior opportunity for the growth of local social media platforms. After nearly 10 years, the number of social media users has been gradually stable, and some social media platforms even show a downward trend. This dissertation investigates the antecedents of continued usage intention and discontinued usage intention from the gratifications and negative information-related incidents respectively in Weibo context. By snowball sampling strategy, it collects 481 and 328 valid samples respectively. According to the structural equation modelling, the entertainment acquisition, flow experience, sense of belonging, and habit are the determinants of Weibo continued usage intention; regarding with Weibo discontinued usage intention, negative information-related incidents, perceived information overload, and social media fatigue are the significant drivers. In addition, the configurations of antecedents for discontinued usage intention are presented by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. During the research process, two focus groups are conducted to examine the results from quantitative research. Information richness is the primary reason to use Weibo, but the channels to cognize Weibo are varied. Also, the attitude towards information is different between the two groups with continued usage intention and discontinued usage intention. Additionally, Weibo is not the first choice of social media in daily life. Furthermore, this dissertation discusses the diversities of research findings between this research and prior studies, which aims to explore the potential reasons. The research results make contributions in both academic and practical fields, which provides the help to the further researchers, which also offers the necessary knowledge to the social media managers during the decision-making process.