Acceptance of social commerce framework in Saudi Arabia

The objective of the current study was to examine the factors of online purchase intentions through social media websites in Saudi Arabia. The extended unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT2) with the addition of social support, social commerce constructs, and cultural moderators was applied. The data was collected from 310 university students in Saudi Arabia. Using PLS 3.0-SEM, the results revealed that performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, habit, price saving orientation, social support, and social commerce constructs have a positive association with behavioral intentions. These results further validate that facilitating conditions, habit, and behavioral intentions have a positive relationship with the use behavior. The moderating results of cultural dimensions (individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance) have also shown the strong impact of behavioral intentions on use behavior. Technology acceptance has gained much attention in different areas but few studies have applied the UTAUT2 model in the social commerce context. The theoretical and managerial implications of this research are explained.     

Factors influencing the adoption of mobile commerce applications in Cameroon

As smartphone penetration continues to double in Sub-Saharan Africa, many businesses are looking into this channel for conducting their business activities. In Cameroon, all the top e-commerce giants have deployed smartphone applications to facilitate m-commerce activities. However, little is known about the factors that influence m-commerce adoption in the country. As such, this study had as objective to determine the key factors that influence consumer’s adoption of m-commerce applications in Cameroon. Using data from 372 respondents, a modified version of the extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) was validated in the Cameroon context. The findings showed that social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivations, perceived risk and perceived trust were significant predictors of the behavioural intention to adopt m-commerce applications. Also, the results showed that consumers who had a high intention to adopt m-commerce were more likely to recommend the technology to others. For researchers, the study depicts the relevance of extending existing technology acceptance models like the UTUAT2 with appropriate factors in different technological and geographical context. For practitioners, the study identifies customer-specific and environmental factors that m-commerce providers in Cameroon and other regions with similar characteristics could consider when designing and implementing strategies for attracting consumers to use their m-commerce applications.     

Understanding behavioural intention to use information technology: Insights from humanitarian practitioners

The contemporary research in the area of individual technology adoption mainly focuses on commercial supply chains. However, limited research focuses on the context of humanitarian supply chains. This calls to develop structural models that can scrutinize the technology adoption behaviour of the users in the humanitarian context. Therefore, this study is an attempt to empirically examine the technology adoption behaviour of humanitarian organizations. It extends the unified theory of the acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model by integrating personal innovativeness and trust in technology with the behavioural intention to adopt technology in the humanitarian context. Data from 192 humanitarian practitioners, who have experienced a large number of disasters, is utilized to empirically validate the conceptual model. The structural equation modelling results show that - out of four constructs namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions under UTAUT - performance expectancy and effort expectancy significantly affect the IT adoption. Contrary to expectations, trust and personal innovation do not affect the behavioural intention. Also, personal innovation does not moderate the relationship between performance expectancy and effort expectancy. This underlines the need to foster a learning culture within these organizations. The efforts made by involved humanitarian organizations may be directed towards improving the level of education, skills and facilitating them with other resources such as appropriate IT and data mining training, so that the technology adoption becomes an integral part of their daily activities. Finally, detailed implications for humanitarian organizations are discussed.     

Ubiquitous use of mobile social network services

Smartphones are becoming increasingly penetrated among people. Social networking is one of the most popular applications that are being widely used through smartphones. The current research aims to understand Chinese users’ behaviour and identifies factors that impact intentions toward the usage of the social network services via handheld devices. By making use of Structural Equation Modelling technique based on a sample of 297 respondents, the research findings show that, technology acceptance model and its variants can only be used as an instrument to understand users’ adoption behaviour. The research findings reveal that mobility in concert with perceived ease of use, use context, and critical mass in concert with social influence impact users’ behavioural intention and usage significantly. Moreover, habitual behaviour of users plays a particularly important role toward the use of mobile social network services.     

Segmenting consumers based on social media advertising perceptions: How does purchase intention differ across segments?

Digitalization, personalization and globalization shape how companies contact and communicate with their consumers who have different needs and wants. In these highly competitive heterogeneous markets, it becomes crucial to reach consumers in an easy, low-cost and more targeted manner. Social media advertising is one of the effective ways of attracting potential customers, retaining attention of current customers and influencing them through persuasive content. Despite its plentiful and obvious advantages, the variation among consumers’ responses to social media advertising remains as a major challenge. Hence, this study aims to identify different consumer segments based on the social media advertising features, discover differences in their individual traits, and examine variation among those segments in terms of the factors that predict their purchase intentions. By utilizing cluster analysis, consumers are segmented according to their perceptions regarding social media advertising features: perceived relevance, performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, informativeness, and interactiveness. It is revealed that consumers are grouped under three segments, namely: “susceptible”, “dispassionate”, and “impervious”. It is found that there are statistically significant differences among these segments in terms of being easily persuaded, impulse buying tendency, self-confidence, and social network proneness in which consumers in “susceptible” segment are more easily persuaded, have high level of self-confidence, have more impulse buying tendency, and are more prone to social networks when compared to other groups. It is also discovered that there are differences among these segments in terms of the factors that determine their purchase intentions for the products presented in social media advertising. The purchase intention of consumers in “susceptible” segment for products exhibited in social media advertising, is determined by perceived relevance, ease of being persuaded, self-confidence and social network proneness. On the other hand, the purchase intention of consumers in the “dispassionate” segment is shaped by informativeness, ease of being persuaded, and social network proneness. Finally, the purchase intention of consumers in “impervious” segment is influenced by hedonic motivation, perceived relevance, impulse buying tendency, and ease of being persuaded. Nevertheless, when the whole sample is considered, it is observed that consumers’ purchase intentions for the products and services presented in social media advertising are influenced by the following factors: perceived relevance, performance expectancy, informativeness, impulse buying tendency, ease of being persuaded, and social network proneness. Understanding differences across segments can help companies design, manage and convey their social media advertising campaigns to their target audience in a convincing, timely, effective, and efficient way, which in turn, let them gain competitive advantage in highly volatile and dynamic markets.     

Domain-specific innovativeness and new product adoption: A case of wearable devices

Wearable technology has recently started gaining mass market attention, but the actual adoption of the technology is not up to expectations. The current study examines the effects of consumers’ domain-specific innovativeness (DSI) on the adoption of wearable technology. In this study, consumer DSI is first conceptualized to have two dimensions namely, product-possessing innovativeness (PPI) and information-possessing innovativeness (IPI). The effects of PPI and IPI on perceived attributes of wearable technology (relative advantage, social image, aesthetics, and novelty) are then examined, which influence purchase intention. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on a survey data from young consumers. Structural equation modeling was employed to evaluate the proposed research model. Results demonstrate that 1) the DSI construct must be examined in the two dimensions so that it can properly measure the nature and characteristics of DSI, 2) IPI plays an important role, having a positive effect on all four perceived attributes of IT innovations, 3) PPI has a positive effect on perceived social image and perceived novelty, and finally 4) all perceived attributes of IT innovations have a positive effect on consumers’ purchase intention of wearable devices. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

A relook at the mobile advertising landscape: What are the new consumer expectations in the retailing industry?

Following the rapid proliferation of mobile devices and the phenomenal advancements in mobile commerce, mobile advertising has since overtaken traditional advertising and seized the lead as the primary advertising channel for businesses. This research seeks to unveil the salient factors that affect the efficacy of mobile advertising in driving purchase intention by expanding the Web Advertising Model to include additional mobile advertising attributes (i.e., credibility and incentive) while considering the role of brand attitude in the process. A cross-sectional study was conducted with quantitative data obtained from 300 eligible respondents through an offline questionnaire survey. The empirical data were subsequently validated using the Structural Equation Modelling Artificial Neural Network (SEM-ANN) method to determine the non-compensatory non-linear relationships. All four ANN models show consistent results with the SEM analysis. The results indicate that consumer perceptions and expectations toward mobile advertising have shifted over time, such that the qualities of informativeness, irritation, and entertainment no longer play a critical role in determining mobile advertising value. On the other hand, the credibility and incentive of mobile advertising were found to be far more crucial in swaying such evaluations. Moreover, mobile advertising value was found to positively affect consumer attitudes towards the mobile advertisement and the advertised brand, which ultimately leads to purchase intention. This study offers an insightful overview of the modern mobile advertising environment that practitioners may use as a handy guide to optimise their mobile advertising strategies to suit the current perceptions and expectations of consumers.     

Technology acceptance theories and factors influencing artificial Intelligence-based intelligent products

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has prompted the development of AI-based intelligent products. Accordingly, various technology acceptance theories have been used to explain acceptance of these products. This comparative study determines which models best explain consumer acceptance of AI-based intelligent products and which factors have the greatest impact in terms of purchase intention. We assessed the utility of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), and the Value-based Adoption Model (VAM) using data collected from a survey sample of 378 respondents, modeling user acceptance in terms of behavioral intention to use AI-based intelligent products. In addition, we employed decomposition analysis to compare each factor included in these models in terms of influence on purchase intention. We found that the VAM performed best in modeling user acceptance. Among the various factors, enjoyment was found to influence user purchase intention the most, followed by subjective norms. The findings of this study confirm that acceptance of highly innovative products with minimal practical value, such as AI-based intelligent products, is more influenced by interest in technology than in utilitarian aspects.     

Integrating guanxi into technology acceptance: An empirical investigation of WeChat

Social influence is an important research topic in the technology acceptance literature, in particular for social media. Prior empirical studies have for the most part employed social influence theory to investigate user intentions to continue with social media, while culture driven theories have been neglected. Rather than using social influence theory, we introduced guanxi theory to explore how guanxi social mechanisms (or processes) influence Chinese users’ continuance intentions in WeChat. Specifically, we developed a model that examines the role of guanxi as manifested by renqing, mianzi and ganqing in perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and continuance intention in WeChat. A survey research method was adopted to test the proposed hypotheses. This study found that ganqing has a positive impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Mianzi exerts a negative effect on continuance intention but exhibits a positive effect on perceived usefulness. Renqing was found to have no significant impact on perceived usefulness and continuance intention. Our study advances the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by introducing guanxi-based constructs in a Chinese mobile social-messaging application context. Our study also offers alternative insights on guanxi-based social influence processes in the Chinese technology acceptance literature.     

The risk of social media addiction between the ideal/false and true self: Testing a path model through the tripartite person-centered perspective of authenticity

Much previous research has focused on the important role played by personality constructs in developing addictive use of social media. However, no investigation has yet been conducted examining the association between dispositional authenticity and online self-idealization, or the authentic self-expression hypothesis and the risk of becoming addicted to social media. To fill this gap, the present study tested a path model that hypothesized direct and indirect effects of the three components of authentic personality on social media addiction via selfitis behaviors. Participants (N = 490; M_age = 20.31 years, SD = 3.76) recruited from high schools and universities completed a self-report survey assessing the three authentic personality traits, selfitis behaviors, and social media addiction. Results generally confirmed the supposed pathways. Direct and indirect effects on social media addiction were discussed by integrating the two mechanisms of compensation related to individual dispositions with the online self-idealizing and authentic self-expression hypothesis underlying selfitis behaviors. Whereas self-alienation was found to have positive direct and indirect effects on increasing of the likelihood of becoming addicted to social media, both traits of the tendency to accept external influence and authenticity showed indirect effects in opposite directions on the risk of addictive use of social media. Findings from the present study extend previous research by exploring inter-individual differences in predisposing and reinforcing factors associated with the online self-presentation.     

Do website features matter in an online gamification context? Focusing on the mediating roles of user experience and attitude

The purposes of this study are mainly to investigate the relationships among website features (i.e. utilitarian and hedonic features), user experience, perceived value (i.e. information value, experiential value, social value, and transaction value), user attitude, and behavioral intentions (i.e. intention to use and word-of-mouth intention), and additionally the mediating effects of user experience and attitude are also explored in this study in an online gamification context. Specifically, this study applies a structural equation model to test the causal relationships among those website features, user experience, perceived value, user experience, and behavioral intentions in an online gamification context. Results show that both utilitarian features and hedonic features have significant impact on users’ experience, which in turn affects their perception of value and attitude. Users’ perceptions of information and transaction value also significantly affect their attitude, and in turn affect their behavioral intentions. Besides, the mediating effects of user experience and attitude are also confirmed in this study. To summarize, the findings of this study can help website managers improve their users’ perceptions of value and attitude more effectively and act as a guide for research and development (R&D) of gamification to acquire competitive advantage and further evoke desired behavioral intentions.     

The interplay between social media virality metrics and message framing in influence perception of pro-environmental messages and behavioral intentions

Present study explored how message framing (gain vs loss) and social media virality metrics (e.g. the number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’; SMVM) affect pro-environmental message’s influence perception and behavioral intention. In a 2 (framing: gain vs loss) × 2 (SMVM: high vs low) between-subjects experiment (N = 404), participants were exposed to Facebook posts about mitigating climate change. Major findings indicate: (1) gain framing, compared to loss, resulted in increased social desirability perception of pro-environmental messages when they are accompanied by high numbers of likes and shares; (2) social desirability perception mediated the effect of message framing on third person perception (TPP) but not on second person perception (SPP); (3) numbers of likes and shares affected participants’ message influence perceptions (TPP and SPP), and this was mediated by social desirability perception; and (4) message influence perceptions were found to be significant predictors of participants’ intentions for climate change mitigation actions. Study results implicate that SMVM can signal media content popularity and this can further affect social desirability and influence perceptions of the content. Message framing appeared to have an effect on how one thinks media content influence other people, especially in the presence of high levels of endorsement by others. The potential role of SPP, the perception of shared media influence, in augmenting public awareness and engagement is discussed in detail.     

Paradox of richness: a cognitive model of media choice

Researchers have long studied the effects of social presence and media richness on media choice and the effects of media use. This focus on social presence and social psychological theories has led to valuable research on communication. However, little research (either empirical or theoretical) has been done to understand the ways in which media choices influence the cognitive processes that underlie communication. In this paper, we present a cognitive-based view of media choice and media use, based on dual process theories of cognition, which argue that in order for individuals to systematically process messages, they must be motivated to process the message and have the ability to process it. We argue that the use of rich media high in social presence induces increased motivation but decreases the ability to process information, while the use of lean media low in social presence induces decreased motivation but increases the ability to process information. The paradox of richness lies in its duality of impact: from a cognitive perspective, rich media high in social presence simultaneously acts to both improve and impair performance.     

Millennials’ socio-psychology and blood donation intention developed from social media communications: A survey of university students

Less than 1% of South-Africans donate blood annually. New donors are required, especially from Millennials, who are large in numbers and influential. Being more receptive to social media communications and altruistic, millennials are the hope of safe blood supply. However, the drivers of millennials’ positive attitude and behavioural intentions (BI) towards donating blood need examination. This study used ideas from Social Cognition Theory, Health Belief Model and Theory of Planned Behaviour to examine how social media communications impact blood donation attitudes and behavioural intention through some socio-psychological outcomes among young adult Millennials at a university in South-Africa. Quantitative data was collected from 650 respondents. Structural equation modelling results revealed that social media communications positively impacted awareness, perception, peers, family, and behavioural intention. Motivation, awareness, peers and family positively influenced attitudes, which in turn, predicted blood donation intention. Blood donations agencies and public policy-makers should seek ways to convert Millennials’ positive attitudes and BI into actual blood donation.     

Public interest in continued use of Chinese government portals: A mixed methods study

Public adoption of policies detailed on government websites is an important topic in the field of e-government research, and researchers have mainly focused on the key factors that influence initial adoption. However, there has been much less discussion on factors influencing the continued use of government websites. This study identifies and tests a theoretical model that predicts consumers’ intentions to continue using government portals, using a mixed methods approach based on Grounded Theory. To construct a theoretical framework of public interest in continued use of government information portals, we interviewed 56 respondents and coded the interview data. Next, we tested the resulting model using data collected from a questionnaire-based survey of 354 users. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) results indicate that continued use is influenced by psychological perception, user characteristics, service parameters of the government portals and the government’s idea. Of these, psychological perception was found to have the strongest effect. These findings enrich the theoretical system of e-government public adoption of intention and have important practical significance for the development of Chinese government portals.     

Value systems and intentions to interact in social media: The digital natives

Current research on social media focus on perceptions, behavioural intention, usage, and seldom take value systems into account. Values are expected to impact behaviour directly or indirectly via intervening constructs, for example, attitude. This paper explores, starting from the Theory of Trying, how value systems impact the digital natives’ interactive behaviour with social media. An empirical research is executed to test a model based on global and domain-specific values, and attitudes towards trying in explaining usage. Based on 116 valid responses from a sample of digital natives, several alternative models were tested. The proposed model based on the theory of trying shows that domain-specific values positively influence behaviour and usage of social media. Attitude towards trying positively mediates the effect of domain-specific values and global values on interactive behaviour with social media. Global values do not influence domain-specific values, nor has a direct impact on behaviour.     

Do social media matter? The effects of information seeking on COVID-19 psychological and behavioral processes

With the evolution of media technologies, social media have developed as a means to purposive and incidental use and subsequent benefits and detriments. This study investigates how individuals’ use of information via social media helps them achieve psychological and behavioral advances in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study’s novelty lies in its positioning of social media information seeking (SMIS) as a precursor to the staged behavioral processes of the Theory of Planned Behavior. This novel extension entails the testing of a conceptual model of the influence of SMIS on three psychological factors (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control), which, in turn, predict behavioral intention. It implements cross-sectional data from a survey of adults in New York City in 2020 (N = 1,021). The structural equation models were well-fitting and generally validated by the data, including the posited two steps from SMIS to psychological factors to behavioral intention. Structural equation modeling underscores the role of SMIS as a core driver of wearing a facemask, with positive effects on attitudes and perceived behavioral control and subsequent mediated positive effects on behavioral intention. In terms of sheltering in place, there was evidence of positive effects of SMIS on perceived behavioral control and, in turn, from the three psychological factors to behavioral intention, but the mediation role of the psychological factors was weaker in this model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.