Social media users’ share intention and subjective well-being. An empirical study based on WeChat
| Published date | 08 October 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-02-2017-0058 |
| Date | 08 October 2018 |
| Pages | 784-801 |
| Author | Liang Ma,Xin Zhang,Xiao Yan Ding |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
Social media users’share
intention and subjective
well-being
An empirical study based on WeChat
Liang Ma, Xin Zhang and Xiao Yan Ding
Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan, China
Abstract
Purpose –The rise of social media has gained increasing attention in recent years; however, few studies
have focused on social media users’specific behavior and subjective well-being. To fill this research gap, the
purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model to investigate factors that affect social media user’s
share intention and the relationship between user’s share intention and subjective well-being.
Design/methodology/approach –Structural equation model is used in this study. A field survey with 398
WeChat users is conducted to test the research model and hypotheses.
Findings –The empirical results show that: utilitarian value, hedonic value, user satisfaction and
information source credibility are important factors affecting users’share intention; users’share intention
positively affects user’s subjective well-being; moderating effects show that relative significance positively
moderates the relationship between utilitarian value and users’share intention; and users’demographic
characteristics differences actually exist in users’share intention.
Originality/value –First, the authors clear that factors affect social media users’share intention from the
perspective of customer-perceived value. The results deepen our understanding about the factors that affect
WeChat users’share intention. Second, the authors focus on the effect of users’specific behavior on users’
subjective well-being and found that users’share intention is one of the important aspects that affect user’s
subjective well-being. More importantly, the authors tested users’characteristic differences in social media
users’share intention, which have previously received limited attention.
Keywords Perceived value, Subjective well-being, Information source credibility, Relative significance,
Share intention
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
As the largest public service platform, WeChat has gained widespread attention in the
academic and management circles (Che and Cao, 2014; G an, 2017). WeChat is a Chinese social
media (instant messaging, commerce and payment services) application developed by
Tencent. The features of WeChat includemessaging, official accounts, moments, WeChatpay
payment services and so on. Specifically, WeChat official accounts, in this paper, refer to
enterprise official accounts –a platform that can push messages and articles to users
(customers) who follow these accounts. In a way, this feature establishes direct interaction
betweenbusinesses and their followerthrough push notifications. Moments is WeChat’sbrand
name for its socialnewsfeed of friends’updates(a mix of Facebook and Twitter), which allows
users to postimages, text, comment,share articles and “like”themalong w ith status update on
their own and friends’page. According to the newest “WeChat influence”report released by
Tencent in 2016, the active number of WeChat u sers exceeded 889m, with the official account
alone exceeding 8m, and advertising reven ue being increased to RMB 3.679bn. With more and
more users browsingarticles of official accounts, sharing articleinformation and commenting
on WeChat, the application has become an important part of people’s lives in China.
Many scholars have studied WeChat users’behavior, such as the posting “likes”behavior
(Gan, 2017), word-of-mouth behavior (Che and Cao, 2014), satisfaction and stickiness
behavior (Lien et al., 2016), continued usage intention (Zhang, Guo, Hu and Liu, 2016) and so on.
Online Information Review
Vol. 42 No. 6, 2018
pp. 784-801
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-02-2017-0058
Received 1 March 2017
Revised 25 July 2017
10 October 2017
1 December 2017
Accepted 15 December 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
784
OIR
42,6
However, one of the most important aspects ignored by scholars is WeChat users’
shared intentions and behaviors in the Chinese context. When users share articles of official
accounts to their moments, more and more people can see the articles being shared. At that time,
the users who share such information become part of the medium for sharing information,
which includes sharing of promotions and marketing of enterprise official accounts as well
(Xu et al., 2015). Thus, factors that affect a user’s willingness to share is an important topic that
deserves deep consideration. WeChat users often follow several official accounts to get
information, such as those from newspapers and periodicals, information about enterprise
management practice and so on. There are considerable amount of information pushed by
official accounts, which might represent an overload. Therefore, we cannot help but wonder
what factors will affect WeChat users’share intention. Besides, previous studies have
proven that different user characteristics such as sex, age and education show significant
differences in the formation of behavioral intention (Mittal and Kamakura, 2001). It would be
interesting and meaningful to find out if user characteristics such as sex, age and education
lead to significant differences in the formation of users’share intentions as well. Currently,
theanswerisuncertain.
Another important question is the relationship between social media users’behavior
and subjective well-being. On the one hand, as an important social medium in China,
WeChat really brings convenience to users, in that they can browse information,
communicate with friends or even work. On the other hand, more and more people are
getting addicted to WeChat, even to the point of becoming obsessed. Although some
scholars have begun to study the relationship between social media usage and users’
subjective well-being, no consistent conclusion has been reached (Gerson et al., 2016).
Some studies report positive associations between social media use and subjective well-
being (Grieve et al., 2013), while others report the opposite (Fox and Moreland, 2015).
However, research on the effect of users’specific behaviors on social media users’
subjective well-being is rare. Wasko and Faraj (2000) emphasize that some people enjoy
sharing knowledge to help others, which brings in a kind of happiness. Thus, it would be
interesting to find if there are associations between WeChat users’share intentions and
their subjective well-being. This paper therefore also addresses whether users with
different characteristics will show differences in subjective well-being. The following
research questions are then put forward:
RQ1. What factors affect WeChat users’share intentions?
RQ2. Is there any relationship between WeChat users’share intentions and subjective
well-being?
Based on the above questions, this paper first developed an integrated model to study
factors affecting WeChat users’share intentions and the relationship between users’share
intentions and users’subjective well-being. Then, we conducted an online survey and used
structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the data in terms of the integrated model.
These empirical results are presented and discussed in later part of the study.
This study offers several contributions. First, this paper has investigated factors
affecting WeChat users’share intentions from the perspective of customer-perceived
value. The results deepen our understanding about factors affecting WeChat users’share
intentions, which differ from those for other social media. Second, the research reported in
the current literature has ignored the effect of social media users’specific behaviors on the
users’subjective well-being. This paper filled that gap and found that a user’sshare
intention is one of the important aspects affecting the user’s subjective well-being.
In addition, this paper examined user characteristics in relation to social media users’
share intentions and subjective well-being, an aspect which has previously received
limited attention.
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Social media
users’share
intention
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