Comparing the web and mobile platforms of a social Q&A service from the user’s perspective
| Pages | 176-191 |
| Date | 19 March 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-06-2017-0149 |
| Published date | 19 March 2018 |
| Author | Xiaoyu Chen,Alton Y.K. Chua,Shengli Deng |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
Comparing the web and mobile
platforms of a social Q&A service
from the user’s perspective
Xiaoyu Chen and Alton Y.K. Chua
Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and
Shengli Deng
School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –As an increasing number of users have acquired information across the web and mobile platforms
for social question and answering (Q&A), it is of interest to explore whether there are differences in social
Q&A usages between the two platforms. The purpose of this paper is to compare web and mobile platforms of
a social Q&A service from the user’s perspective in terms of three dimensions, namely, demographics,
individual-based constructs, and information-based constructs.
Design/methodology/approach –Because Zhihu.com is one of the most popular social Q&A sites in
China, the authors used online questionnaires to investigate its users’perceptions of these three dimensions.
From January to March 2016, the authors obtained 278 valid responses in total through snowball and
convenient sampling. Collected data are analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
Findings –The results indicate that there exist significant differences between web users and mobile users
on Zhihu.com in terms of gender, affinity, and information seeking. More specifically, compared to the male
users, more female users rely on the mobile platform to access the information service; mobile users perceive
higher affinity with Zhihu.com than web users; and mobile users perceive higher information-seeking
intention than web users do.
Originality/value –Regarding the theoretical aspect, this study proposes a conceptual framework for
comparison between the web and mobile platforms of social Q&A from the user’s perspective. Regarding the
practical aspect, the comparative results of this study could give social Q&A service providers useful
information about users’differences between web and mobile platforms of social Q&A services.
Keywords Social Q&A, Mobileservice, Comparative study, Web service, User’s perspective, Zhihu.com
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Social question and answering (Q&A) provides an avenue for internet users to share
information (Gazan, 2011; Choi and Shah, 2017). The appeal of social Q&A services lies in
the ease of use and acceptable turnaround time (Chua and Banerjee, 2013).
Meanwhile, along with the explosive adoption of mobile services, traditional web-
based social Q&A services have begun to venture into the mobile space (Lee et al., 2012;
Lee et al., 2013). As a result, users can post questions or answer them via a mobile
platform anytime and anywhere (Shen et al., 2014). The mobile platform of social
Q&A refers to any service platform based on mobile devices such as smartphones,
tablets, etc. (Zhao et al., 2015). For example, Zhihu.com, which is one of the most popular
social Q&A services in China, has both web-based and mobile-based platforms
(henceforth web and mobile platforms). The website had 18.5 million daily active users
seeking information in 2016[1].
With the increasing number of users acquiring information across web and mobile
platforms, researchers have been interested in comparing the two platforms from the user’s
perspective (Zha, Zhang and Yan, 2015). From this viewpoint, researchers tend to
investigate differences between web and mobile platforms based on the individual
differences of users (e.g. demographics) and their perceptions of some specific constructs
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 2, 2018
pp. 176-191
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-06-2017-0149
Received 23 June 2017
Revised 17 October 2017
10 January 2018
Accepted 15 January 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
176
AJIM
70,2
related to web and mobile services (e.g. perceived benefits and risks, and related behavioural
intentions) (Wang et al., 2013; Zha, Zhang and Yan, 2015). The contexts of these
investigations primarily include e-commerce, banking, instant messaging, and
entertainment services (e.g. Ha et al., 2007; Ghose et al., 2012; Tan and Goh, 2015). Since
mobile platforms are increasingly important tools for accessing social Q&A services (Lee
et al., 2013), this area needs to be explored as well.
Among the few works undertaken on social Q&A from the user’s perspective, three
primary dimensions have yet to be jointly considered. The first is the user demographics.
Indeed, demographics have been a crucial aspect associated with user choice of a specific
social media platform (Kim et al., 2014). For example, male users prefer web e-commerce
while female users prefer mobile e-commerce (Wang et al.,2013).Thus,itwouldbe
worthwhile to study if this holds true when users choose web and mobile social
Q&A platforms.
The second dimension is the individual-based constructs related to the individual
factors influencing social Q&A use. In this study, individual-based constructs include
self-efficacy for critical thinking, affinity, and satisfaction of social Q&A users. Although
some of these individual-based constructs have been investigated in the related literature
(e.g. Chen and Deng, 2014; Lee et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2013; Zha, Zhang, Yan and Xiao, 2015),
to the best of our knowledge, investigations on user perceptions of these constructs and on
comparisons between web and mobile platforms have not been considered under one
umbrella. This connection is significant because these two aspects can jointly help
understand user perception differences in the constructs between web and mobile social
Q&A platforms.
The third dimension is the information-based constructs that refer to information-related
factors influencing individual social Q&A use. In this study, information-based constructs
include information need, information seeking, and information adoption. Despite some
existing studies having investigated the user perceptions of these constructs when using
social Q&A services (e.g. Agichtein et al., 2009; Chen and Deng, 2014; Choi and Shah, 2017);
similarly, the investigations combining user perceptions of these constructs with the
comparison between the web and mobile social Q&A platforms are limited. Hence, this is an
area that demands empirical evidence as well.
Overall, on one hand, the three dimensions are significant to the studies of social Q&A
services from the user’s perspective. On the other hand, among the extant studies
comparing the web and mobile platforms of social Q&A (e.g. Lee et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2013;
Shen et al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2015), these parallel dimensions have not been examined
together to investigate this issue. For these reasons, this paper seeks to investigate web and
mobile social Q&A platforms based on a framework for comparison. The framework is
composed of three dimensions, namely, demographics, individual-based constructs, and
information-based constructs. Moreover, Zhihu.com is chosen as the social Q&A service for
the investigation due to its popularity among Chinese social Q&A users ( Jin et al., 2015).
Specifically, the following three research questions are investigated:
RQ1. How do web and mobile social Q&A platforms differ in demographics based on
their respective users?
RQ2. How do web and mobile social Q&A platforms differ in individual-based
constructs based on the perceptions of their respective users?
RQ3. How do web and mobile social Q&A platforms differ in information-based
constructs based on the perceptions of their respective users?
This study holds significance for both theory and practice. On the theoretical aspect,
it proposed a framework for comparison between web and mobile social Q&A platforms
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Comparing a
social Q&A
service
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