How can WeChat contribute to psychosocial benefits? Unpacking mechanisms underlying network size, social capital and life satisfaction among sojourners
| Pages | 1362-1378 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2018-0168 |
| Date | 11 November 2019 |
| Published date | 11 November 2019 |
| Author | Hua Pang |
How can WeChat contribute to
psychosocial benefits? Unpacking
mechanisms underlying network
size, social capital and life
satisfaction among sojourners
Hua Pang
Institute of New Media, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China and
Institute of Media and Communication, Dresden, Germany
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to systematically unpack whether and how WeChat network size is
correlated with perceived social capital and life satisfaction among Chinese overseas students in Germany.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on a web-based survey data collected from 218 sojourners,
zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were separately implemented to tackle the
complicated research questions.
Findings –Findings demonstrate that an individual’s WeChat network size significantly and directly
influences bridging, bonding and maintained social capital. Importantly, a path model demonstrates that
these distinct dimensions of social capital are all significant predictors of life satisfaction. Furthermore, the
empirical evidence reveals that bridging, bonding and maintained social capital can mediate the association
between network size and well-being outcome.
Research limitations/implications –Theoretically, the paper is an initial attempt contributing to the
previous studies on estimating the influence of WeChat friendships on social capital and life satisfaction.
Practically, these findings will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of effect of personal network
characteristics derived from the dominant media interaction on social connectedness and life quality.
Originality/value –Despite WeChat is immensely prevalent in Mainland China, only few studies have
concentrated on the role of WeChat network size in fostering individuals’social and psychological
development. The work provides unique evidence that number of friends on the emerging technology could
indirectly benefit sojourners’satisfaction with life through processes involving diverse categories of social
capital in a trans-cultural environment.
Keywords Germany, Life satisfaction, Social capital, WeChat, Network size, Chinese sojourners
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Recently, the unprecedented proliferation of social networking sites (SNSs) has
fundamentally revolutionized how individuals contact and interact with others from
diverse demographic, cultural and geographical backgrounds in the digital era (Ishii, 2017;
Pang, 2018a). SNSs represent the innovative web-based communication services where
users can instantly construct personal profiles, articulate their social connectednesses, as
well as cultivate or maintain networked interpersonal ties with other members via sharing,
liking and commenting on a broad variety of contents (Dhir and Tsai, 2017; Pang, 2016).
According to the latest research, visiting social media has become one of the most prevalent
computer-mediated activities among youth adults (Lu et al., 2018). Additionally, previous
documents have extensively verified that the SNS adoption of younger generation especially
college attending students has been generally linked to a plethora of social and
psychological consequences, consisting of gratification with campus life, civic and political
engagement, and bridging or bonding aspects of social capital (Burke and Kraut, 2016;
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 7, 2019
pp. 1362-1378
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-05-2018-0168
Received 10 May 2018
Revised 12 August 2018
12 February 2019
Accepted 4 May 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 19CXW035).
1362
OIR
43,7
Dhir et al., 2017; Lee et al., 2018; Sheer and Rice, 2017). As a result, there is a clear need for
empirical studies to systematically uncover the nature of the associations shared by SNS
utilization and various psychosocial variables among college students.
As the new technology has increasingly infiltrated into individual’s routine daily life, a
growing number of scholars have shifted their attention to issues concerning the potential
influence of SNS interaction on college students’social connectednesses and psychological
well-being. Accordingly, a substantial body of literature has consistently demonstrated that
SNS utilization is positively associated with university students’social support and network
establishing, consequently contributing to their psychosocial development (Chen and Li,
2017; Lee et al., 2018; Li and Chen, 2014; Raza et al., 2017). Nevertheless, surprisingly, the
large majority of existing studies have primary concentrated on the social implications of
international SNSs such as Facebook in western counties (Hanna et al., 2017; Hu et al., 2017;
Lönnqvist and große Deters, 2016; Lee et al., 2018). In sharp contrast, only a few articles
have assessed how utilizing indigenous SNSs, particularly WeChat, is closely associated
with individual-level well-being and social interactions with others in Mainland China
(Gan, 2017; Wen et al., 2016). Recent studies have suggested that the usage behaviors on
SNSs seem to be different between English-based SNSs and Chinese-based SNSs (Chua and
Banerjee, 2013; Forbush and Foucault-Welles, 2016; Li and Chen, 2014; Qiu et al., 2013).
Generally, users of Chinese-based SNSs inclined to have closer social connections, with their
practices representing an indirect interaction form and less open online disclosure (Qiu et al.,
2013). Comparatively, users of English-based SNSs prone to have wider social ties, with
their practices displaying a more direct interaction style and bolder online disclosure (Chen
and Yang, 2015). For example, users of English SNSs tend to transmit their information by
writing blogs or sharing private photos, and users of Chinese SNSs prefer to play online
games or share useful resources with each others (Chapman and Lahav, 2008). Accordingly,
pervious findings from English-based SNSs especially Facebook may not be possible to
generalize to WeChat. Therefore, more empirical studies need to assess the Chinese domestic
SNS use in making predictions about its influences on the psychosocial outcomes of the user
and extend the generalizability of the results in distinct settings.
Furthermore, although previous studies of cross-culture adjustment have probed the
relationships between Chinese sojourners’social networks and mental and physical health
in different countries( Ju et al., 2016; Li and Chen, 2014; Pang, 2018b; Panggabean et al., 2013;
Ye, 2006), relatively little empirical work so far has been undertaken to assess the
association between the number of WeChat friends and various psychosocial consequences
from the cyber psychological perspective. Along with social involvement and emotional
well-being being the product of internet simultaneously (Kraut et al., 1998), the research of
WeChat could be meaningful when broadening the scope of study by adding to the
literature on cyber psychological theories in the computer-mediated communication context.
For instance, it permits people to uncover the newly emerging media practices and
emotional well-being outcomes rarely observed in the real-life circumstances, which would
supplement or distinct from existing behaviors. More importantly, due to prior investigation
has focused predominantly on the direct association between SNS utilization and well-being
consequences (Chen and Li, 2017; Yoo and Jeong, 2017), there is a lack of larger quantitative
studies to probe the underlying mediating mechanism and moderating variables such as
social capital in the relationships.
Of note, among a multitude of domestic SNSs available in contemporary China, WeChat
has been the most widely utilized application with around 988.6m active daily users by the
end of December, 2017 (Tencent, 2018). Similar to WhatsApp, WeChat enables members to
conveniently send a wide range of messages in multiple formats (e.g. real-time voice, texts
and photos) to either a certain individual or a specific group of persons (Chen, 2017; DeLuca
et al., 2016; Pang, 2018c). Unlike WhatsApp, users are allowed to actively share pictures,
1363
The
psychosocial
benefits of
WeChat
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