Понимание принятия сайтов социальных сетей в Китае: сравнение состояний предпринятия и постпринятия.

Understanding social networking sites adoption in China: A comparison of pre-adoption and post-adoption

Abstract

Prior experience is an important determinant factor of individual behavior. This paper developed a theoretical model to predict the adoption intention of pre-adopters and post-adopters on social networking sites based on the theory of planned behavior. Using data from online surveys of netizens in China, the proposed model was tested in the context of pre-adoption and post-adoption by using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique. Then, multi-groups analysis was explored to compare the difference between the two groups. The results show that attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavior control have significant effect on the adoption intention of pre-adopters and post-adopters, and there is no significant difference between the two groups. In addition, information, meeting new people, and conformity motivations have the same significant effect on both groups. However, entertainment motivation has a significant effect on pre-adopters but connecting with old friends has none; in contrast, connecting with old friends has significant effect on post-adopters while entertainment motivation has no significant effect.

1. Introduction

Web 2.0 has resulted in profound changes in interpersonal interaction in computer-mediated communication. Guided by Psychologist Milgram’s (1967) six-degree theory and characterized by real interpersonal relationships, bottom-up developed, peoplecentric, user-controlled, context-driven, and self-organizing (Mayfield, 2005; Rau, Gao, & Ding, 2008), social networking sites (SNS) have quickly diffused around the world. SNS is deemed an important revolution of the Internet after Google (OECD, 2007).

Different from other online communities, SNS is the first application in which people can explicitly articulate their social networks (Rau et al., 2008). The number of SNS has dramatically increased in recent years (Kwon & Wen, 2010). Attracting and retaining users are important issues on the survival and development of SNS in different stages of its lifecycle.