Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics

The role of perceived benefits and personality traits on mobile instant messaging
users’ responses
Chandrasekaran Padmavathy, Seonjeong (Ally) Lee, Murugan Pattusamy, Mukesh Kumar Dey, Murali
Swapana,
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APJML-07-2017-0136
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Role of perceived
The role of perceived benefits benefits and
and personality traits on personality traits

mobile instant messaging

users’ responses
Chandrasekaran Padmavathy Received 14 July 2017
Revised 16 January 2018
Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India 9 March 2018
2 June 2018
Seonjeong (Ally) Lee
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Accepted 28 July 2018

College of Education Health and Human Services, Kent State University,
Kent, Ohio, USA
Murugan Pattusamy
University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India, and
Mukesh Kumar Dey and Murali Swapana
Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India

Abstract
Purpose – Mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications have grown profusely worldwide in recent years in
tandem with increased smartphone usage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among
perceived benefits, personality traits, MIM satisfaction, and social capital responses.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses partial least squares-SEM to investigate proposed
hypotheses based on a sample of 1,519 WhatsApp users.
Findings – The results indicate that perceived benefits of MIM and personality traits have a positive
influence on MIM satisfaction; and MIM satisfaction in turn has a positive effect on users’ social capital
responses. MIM satisfaction partially mediates the relationships between perceived benefits, traits, and social
capital. Additionally, the results indicate positive significant effect of Gen X and Y on social capital among
other control variables.
Research limitations/implications – This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on MIM.
The results also provide important implications for MIM application developers and instigate future research
in the MIM platform.
Originality/value – This study is the first attempt in integrating perceived benefits, personality traits, and
social capital in MIM literature.
Keywords Social capital, Perceived benefits, Personality traits,
Mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications, Uses and gratifications (U&G) theory, India
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Smartphone has become an essential and a useful gadget in everyone’s life. The extensive
usage of smartphone worldwide has resulted in utilization of a new social media platform
called mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications (Karapanos et al., 2016; Quan-Haase and
Young, 2010). MIM is a mobile application that runs on platforms such as iOS, Android, and
Windows and is freely downloadable using mobile data plan or Wi-Fi (Ke and Li, 2009;
Sheer and Rice, 2017). In India, WhatsApp is the most popular and widely used instant
messaging (IM) platform among other MIM tools such as Snapchat, Myspace, and WeChat
(Choudhary, 2015). Founded in 2009, WhatsApp, one of the most attractive tools, has 900m
active users from different countries including India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing
and Logistics
Spain. Almost 90 percent of Indian smartphone users have installed WhatsApp in their © Emerald Publishing Limited
1355-5855
devices. There are 200m active WhatsApp users in India, contributing to 10 percent of its DOI 10.1108/APJML-07-2017-0136
 APJML global users and the messenger enjoys great popularity with a 96 percent reach (Smith,
2017). It is the most preferred cost-effective alternative to paid services such as short
message service and mobile calling due to its seamless fast text-document sharing and no
charge-calling feature (Olson, 2013). Customers use WhatsApp to create micro-groups (e.g.
groups of their street mates and classmates); share information in the form of texts, pictures,
documents and videos; and keep connected with the society. Thus, customers can
communicate socially as well as professionally by using WhatsApp in the MIM
environment (Conole et al., 2008; Jones et al., 2010; Judd and Kennedy, 2010; Sheer and Rice,
2017).
This emerging MIM phenomenon has attracted various researchers and has generated
insightful results by adopting uses and gratifications (U&G) theory (e.g. Aharony, 2015a),
technology acceptance model (TAM) (e.g. Jiang and Deng, 2011); social capital (e.g.
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Aharony, 2015b; Sheer and Rice, 2017); network externality (Zhou et al., 2015); and
expectation-confirmation theory (e.g. Oghuma et al., 2015, 2016). However, limited
research has integrated and empirically investigated benefits of MIM, personality traits,
MIM satisfaction and social capital paradigm. In addition, there is much to learn about the
effect of perceived benefits and personality traits on MIM users’ responses (Bryant and
Oliver, 2009; Hsieh and Tseng, 2017). Research addressing vital issues such as why MIM
users continue to use MIM apps and whether they use for bridging, bonding and
maintaining social capital remains scarce (Ellison et al., 2007; Lam, 2013; Lin and Tong,
2007). Furthermore, research is needed to examine the mediating effect of MIM users’
satisfaction in the relationships between benefits, personality traits, and social capital.
It seems ambitious to attribute MIM users’ benefits and traits such as information sharing
and extraversion directly to sociality as MIM and other SNS studies reveal inconsistent
findings, signifying possible mediators in the relationship between MIM benefits and
social capital (Kim et al., 2010; Lam, 2013; Lin and Tong, 2007). Moreover, it is important to
examine MIM usage specific to countries and cultures since customers in different
countries or cultures perceive MIM usage differently (Aharony, 2015a). Thus, to address
the research gaps, this study attempts to integrate U&G theory (Katz et al., 1973), big five
personality traits (Digman, 1990), and social capital paradigm (Ellison et al., 2007; Putnam,
2000) so as to explore factors that may influence users’ satisfaction on MIM and the reason
to use MIM platform. Each of these theories adds different dimensions and expands our
comprehension to know users’ responses and reasons for MIM usage. For instance, U&G
approach is a popular theory that reflects media usage to fulfill one’s needs based on
different goals. Big five personality traits conceptualize different personality
characteristics that add another perspective to elicit consumers’ technology usage.
On the other hand, social capital theory highlights on bridging, bonding, and maintaining
relationship with the community. Based on these theoretical underpinnings, this study
examines the relationships among perceived benefits, personality traits, users’
satisfaction, and social capital. This study also investigates the mediating effect of
MIM satisfaction in the relationships between perceived benefits, traits, and social capital.
This study contributes to MIM literature at least in two ways. First, the current research
investigates the underexplored, yet important research area, integrating U&G, personality
traits, and social capital. Second, it provides insights on the factors that influence users’
MIM satisfaction and their intention to get connected with virtual communities in the
context of India, where usage of MIM apps is booming.

2. Hypotheses development
2.1 Perceived benefits of using MIM
U&G theory (Katz et al., 1973) explains how each user utilizes media to fulfill his/her needs,
based on different goals. According to Katz et al. (1974), U&G theory assumes media users
 are active, goal-directed and able to choose the media to gratify their needs as well as to Role of perceived
fulfill their intrinsic needs, and have different motivations to engage with the media benefits and
(Rubin, 1994). U&G theory has been considered as a useful approach to understand users’ personality traits
motivations of using media. It has been extensively applied in different media, such as radio
(Mendelsohn, 1964), TV (Rubin, 1983), internet (Charney and Greenberg, 2002), web-based
information service (Luo et al., 2011), smartphone usage ( Joo and Sang, 2013), virtual
environment (Nambisan and Baron, 2009) and social media (Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008).
Among different users’ motivation, U&G theory differentiates four benefits of using the
selected media – personal, cognitive, social and hedonic benefits – related to users’ basic
behavioral needs (Nambisan and Baron, 2009). This study focuses on professional
advancement, information sharing and social interaction as important benefits of using MIM,
which are related to personal, cognitive and social benefits. People use MIM to share
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information, seek information and to interact with others (Ha et al., 2015; Tan and Goh, 2015).
Users also use MIM due to its convenience and personalization (Luo et al., 2011). Thus, this
study focuses on personal, cognitive and social benefits of U&G theory.
Professional advancement signifies personal benefits. Personal benefits refer to the
enhancement of users’ status and self-efficacy, explaining whether the media is able to enhance
users’ status and build reputation (Katz et al., 1973). Verhagen et al. (2015) investigate personal
benefits through peer recognition and company recognition. Information sharing, an important
motivation for the internet users (Hur et al., 2017), relates to cognitive benefits. Cognitive
benefits explain whether the media is able to provide desirable information and satisfy users’
learning desires (Nambisan and Baron, 2009). Verhagen et al. (2015) view cognitive benefits as
access to knowledge and feedback. By providing cognitive benefits, media provides a place to
share information, and promote knowledge exchange among users. When needed, users search
for information to learn about people and events (Luo et al., 2011). Social interaction explains
social benefits. Social benefits refer to relational ties among users, and indicate encouragement
of media for social interactions and users’ connections (Nambisan and Baron, 2009).
There are various studies that identify positive effect of these perceived benefits on
users’ satisfaction. For instance, Cheung et al. (2011) identify the role of social benefits on
students’ we-intention in the context of online social networks. Ha et al. (2015) identify
positive influence of social interaction and cognitive benefits on users’ attitude toward
mobile SNS. Wei and Lu (2014) also ascertain the importance of social interactions as
individual gratification when users play mobile social games. Wang and Song (2017)
examine perceived usefulness and perceived ease-of-use as perceived benefits that
influence user satisfaction. Karlinsky-Shichor and Zviran (2016) also investigate the
effects of perceived benefits such as information quality, system quality and service
quality on user satisfaction. In addition, social exchange theory supports the relationship
between perceived benefits of MIM and users’ satisfaction with MIM. It explains people’s
tendency to maximize benefits and minimize costs (Emerson, 1976). Accordingly, when
users perceive certain benefits of using MIM, they are more likely to have higher
satisfaction levels by using it. For instance, Ogara et al. (2014) and Oghuma et al. (2016)
find positive effect of user experience with MIM on user satisfaction. Similarly, Pantano
and Priporas (2016) find positive effects of mobile technologies on customer behavior,
focusing on users’ experience. In addition, Ha et al. (2015) find gratification features
positively influence users’ attitude toward mobile SNS. Based on the above discussions,
this study predicts the positive effects of different types of benefits on users’ satisfaction
with MIM. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:
H1. Professional advancement has positive effects on MIM users’ satisfaction.
H2. Social interaction has positive effects on MIM users’ satisfaction.
H3. Information sharing has positive effects on MIM users’ satisfaction.
 APJML 2.2 Personality influence: extraversion and openness to experience
Individual differences lead to different users’ behavior toward mobile technology (Kim et al.,
2015). Personality has been an important role in influencing users’ information technology
behavior (Rosen and Kluemper, 2008; Svendsen et al., 2013). Personality influences users’
interaction with technology. The big five dimensional traits describe one’s differences in
personality, including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability
and openness to experience (Digman, 1990). Among these five trait variables, extraversion
and openness to experience are identified as the most relevant personality trait to
Smartphone usage (Kim et al., 2015). Therefore, this study investigates these two personality
types as important traits that influence users’ MIM satisfaction.
Extraversion explains whether people are comfortable with direct social interaction (Hsiao
et al., 2016). Individuals who show high on extraversion tend to have more online social
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experiences (Gosling et al., 2011). Extraverts are more likely to use smartphones as a source of
stimulation (Butt and Phillips, 2008). For instance, Kim et al. (2015) ascertain positive influence
of extraversion on users’ likelihood of smartphone ownership. Hsiao et al. (2016) also recognize
the positive relationship between extraversion and compulsive use of social apps. Openness to
experience refers to users’ levels of curiosity and their likelihood of receiving new ideas (Hsiao
et al., 2016). Users, who are open to experience, tend to have broad interests, enjoy new
experiences, and try new media tool (Butt and Phillips, 2008). They are likely to seek out new
and novel experiences (Kabadayi and Price, 2014). Openness to experience relates to users’
adoption of smartphone use (Cho and Park, 2014). When users have a personality that inclined
towards engagement with MIM, they tend to be satisfied with using MIM. Therefore, when
users are extraverted and open to experience, they are more likely to get satisfaction with
MIM use, due to their inherent personality. Thus, we propose the following hypotheses:
H4. Extraversion has positive effects on MIM users’ satisfaction.
H5. Openness to experience has positive effects on MIM users’ satisfaction.

2.3 Satisfaction with MIM

Satisfaction with MIM refers to the amount of pleasure that a user acquires while using
MIM. User satisfaction has been considered as one of the important research topics in the
field of information systems (Au et al., 2008). User satisfaction reflects the degree of a user’s
positive feeling towards MIM (Ogara et al., 2014). It plays a critical role in developing the
overall technology experience (Mahmood et al., 2000; Wang and Song, 2017). When users get
satisfaction with MIM, they are more likely to engage with MIM. Engaging with MIM
influences users’ bonding, bridging and maintaining social capital (Lin, 2011; Piwek and
Joinson, 2016; Sheer and Rice, 2017).
One of the main purposes of using MIM is to maintain and enhance users’ social
relationships (Kim et al., 2015). Previous studies identify that use of technology such as SNSs
positively influence social capital. For instance, Ji et al. (2010) identify that individuals use SNS
for both bonding and bridging social capital across three different cultures, including Korea,
China and the USA. Lee et al. (2014) also ascertain the relationships between Facebook features
and social capital. Moreover, Liu and Brown (2014) examine the influence of positive feedback
of social media on social capital. The authors determine that users’ satisfaction affects users’
behavioral responses, such as social capital. Therefore, this study proposes positive
relationship between MIM satisfaction and social capital, positing the following hypothesis:
H6. MIM users’ satisfaction has positive effects on social capital.
In addition to the direct relationship between perceived benefits and users’ satisfaction as
well as between personality and users’ satisfaction, previous literature provides evidence for
 mediating role of user satisfaction. In the context of mobile social apps, Hsiao et al. (2016) Role of perceived
find user satisfaction mediate the relationship between perceived usefulness and users’ benefits and
intention to use the Apps. In addition, several studies reveal the effect of personality on personality traits
social capital through users’ satisfaction (e.g. Ilies et al., 2009). When users have
extraversion and openness to experience personality, they are more likely to enhance social
relationships through their satisfaction with the mobile apps. Therefore, the following
hypotheses are proposed:
H7a. MIM users’ satisfaction mediates the relationship between MIM benefits and
social capital.
H7b. MIM users’ satisfaction mediates the relationship between personality traits and
social capital.
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2.4 Social capital

Social capital refers to the actual or potential resources embedded in durable social
relationships (Bourdieu, 1986). Putnam (2000) defines social capital as connections among
people. Portes (1998, p. 7) supports social capital by stating “to possess social capital, a person
must be related to others, and these others, not himself, who are the actual source of his or her
advantage.” The importance of social capital has been expanded from face-to-face interactions,
letters and phone calls (Putnam, 2000) to SNSs (Lee et al., 2014) and mobile technology, such as
MIM (Lin, 2011; Piwek and Joinson, 2016; Sheer and Rice, 2017). Three types of social capital
such as bonding, bridging and maintaining social capital are the outcomes of social interactions
in SNSs or MIM (Ellison et al., 2007; Mills et al., 2014; Piwek and Joinson, 2016).
Bonding social capital refers to the connections between family and close friends
(Lee et al., 2014). It explains strong-tie relationships and tends to have strong personal
connections and maintain reciprocity among users (Lee et al., 2014). When people spend a
great amount of time together, they share emotional intensity, and feel intimacy
(Granovetter, 1973), and tend to have bonding social capital.
Bridging social capital refers to the connections between people from different
backgrounds without having much of the relationship quality and emotional support.
It appears when users possess weak-tie relationships (Williams, 2006). Bridging social
capital occurs from social linkages that are available across diverse groups, such as
acquaintances (Harpham et al., 2002), previous co-workers or former classmates (Lee et al.,
2014). The role of bridging social capital has been identified in the context of SNSs (Ellison
et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2014; Jang and Dworkin, 2014).
Maintained social capital explains preexisting social ties that users already have
(Ellison et al., 2007). Ellison et al. (2007) refer maintained social capital to the values
generated from acquaintances that are geographically separated as life progresses.
An example of this social capital is relationship that students have in their hometown and
the relationship they had to leave due to external and geographical changes in their life
(Li and Chen, 2014). Ellison et al. (2007) posit that the intensity of Facebook use positively
influences all the three types of social capital among college students.
Based on the above discussions, this study proposes the following research framework
to investigate the relationships among perceived benefits of MIM, users’ openness to
experience, users’ extraversion, satisfaction and social capital (see Figure 1).

3. Method
3.1 Data collection
Data were collected from Indian WhatsApp users. A total of 90 percent of Indian
Smartphone users have installed WhatsApp and use WhatsApp as their primary platform
 APJML Perceived Benefits

Professional
Advancement

H1
Social
Interaction
H2
Social Capital
H6 Bridging
Information MIM
Sharing H3 Bonding
Satisfaction
Maintaining
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Personality Traits

H4
Extraversion
H5 Control Variables: age,
gender, duration of
Openness to usage, and Gen X and Y
Figure 1. Experience
Research model

for text messaging through mobile network (Choudhary, 2015). An online questionnaire was
circulated among university alumni, who are at present working professionals, and
undergraduate students of a very large university situated in South India. The use of a student
sample for MIM has found support in Mylona and Priporas (2008), Jones et al. (2010) and Judd
and Kennedy (2010), who argue that they are dominant users of technological social media and
MIM apps. In addition, we have used university alumni network to collect data.
Invitation messages were posted to the e-mail ids of students and alumni over a
four-week period. To avoid duplicate responses, respondent identity was confirmed by
using the e-mail and IP address obtained when the questionnaires were received. A total of
861 responses were received from students. Of those, 766 were found usable, indicating a
valid return of 88 percent. 756 responses were received from university alumni and 753 were
usable after excluding responses that were not valid, indicating a valid return rate of
99 percent. A total of 1,519 data were used for analysis.
Two-third of the respondents (1,034) were male (68.1 percent) and the rest (485) were
(31.9 percent) female. 423 (27.8 percent) people reported using WhatsApp for 1 to 2 h every
day, and 378 users (24.9 percent) were using WhatsApp for 3 to 4 h. A total of 569 users had
more than 400 contacts (37.5) and 460 people (30.3 percent) had contacts ranging from 300 to
400. In total, 766 respondents belonged to Gen Y (born between 1980 and 1995) and 753
belonged to Gen X (born between 1965 and 1979) (Zopiatis et al., 2012).

3.2 Measures
To ensure content validity, the items selected for the constructs were largely adapted from
prior research. U&G items were adopted from Smock et al. (2011), personality traits were
adopted and modified from John and Srivastava (1999) and MIM satisfaction items were
adopted from Ellison et al. (2007). The social capital section was extracted and modified from
the work of Ellison et al. (2007). All items were measured using the five-point Likert scale,
ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The instrument also captured
demographic questions including age, gender, amount of time spent on WhatsApp in a
typical day and number of contacts in WhatsApp. A pretest was done that involved five
 respondents, each with more than two years of experience using WhatsApp. Role of perceived
The respondents were asked to comment on the length of the instrument, the format, and benefits and
the wording of the scales. personality traits
4. Data analysis and results
To test the proposed hypothesized model (Figure 1), we used Partial Least Squares Structural
Equation Modeling technique (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS – 3.1 (Ringle et al., 2014). PLS-SEM
has been widely used in recent marketing literature (e.g. Chang et al., 2016;
Toe et al., 2015). Partial least squares based estimation method has several advantages
over other techniques like Covariance based SEM. First, PLS-SEM can handle non-normal
data and can give parameter estimation without estimation bias. Second, this method can
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handle complex relationships among the variables. A construct can also have less than three
items (Hair et al., 2011, 2013). Hair et al. (2016) recommend bootstrap sampling method with
5,000 samples to generate t-values to test the significance of hypotheses.
First, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to confirm the factor
structure. Items that had poor loadings and/or cross-loadings were removed from further
analysis. Descriptive statistics was also performed to identify mean, standard deviation and
bivariate correlation of the constructs. Table I shows the descriptive statistics.
In addition, a common method bias (CMB) test was performed to minimize the risk of
CMB in our sample. Harman’s single factor test using EFA without rotation was carried out
in SPSS 21. The test result confirmed that the first factor did not account for more than
50 percent of the variance. Based on this statistical test, the present study is free from CMB
(Podsakoff et al., 2003).
Followed by EFA and CMB, measurement model was estimated using SmartPLS-3.1.
Measurement model validity was assessed using convergent and discriminant validity.
Convergent validity was achieved as factor loadings of all the items were greater than
0.7 and were highly significant at 0.01 level; Cronbach’s α values of all the constructs were
greater than the threshold level of 0.7; average variance extracted (AVE) values were higher
than 0.5 (Henseler et al., 2009); and composite reliability (CR) values were also higher than
0.7 (Hair et al., 2009). Discriminant validity was achieved as square root of AVE was greater
than the inter-construct correlations (Henseler et al., 2009; Fornell and Larcker, 1981).
Table II indicates measurement model validity by providing factor loadings, t-values, and
Cronbach’s α, AVE and CR values. Table III shows discriminant validity results.
After validating the measurement model, two structural models were estimated: full
mediation model, and partial mediation model. Results of the full mediation model
supported all the proposed hypotheses. The relationship between professional advancement
and MIM satisfaction (H1: β ¼ 0.30, t ¼ 9.02), social interaction and MIM satisfaction
(H2: β ¼ 0.18, t ¼ 5.71), information sharing and MIM satisfaction (H3: β ¼ 0.09, t ¼ 2.56),
extraversion and MIM satisfaction (H4: β ¼ 0.11, t ¼ 3.88), and openness to experience and

Constructs Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Professional advancement 3.33 1.08 1

2. Social interaction 3.51 1.06 0.57** 1
3. Information sharing 3.48 1 0.68** 0.61** 1
4. Extraversion 3.78 0.68 0.34** 0.37** 0.32** 1
5. Openness to experience 3.87 0.7 0.25** 0.30** 0.26** 0.68** 1
6. Satisfaction 3.63 0.94 0.50** 0.46** 0.45** 0.40** 0.34** 1 Table I.
7. Social capital 3.51 0.78 0.55** 0.59** 0.55** 0.49** 0.44** 0.59** 1 Descriptive statistics
Notes: n ¼ 1,519. **p o 0.01, construct correlations were significant at 0.01 level and correlations
 APJML Constructs and items Items Loadings t-value Cronbach’s α AVE CR

Professional advancement (I use WhatsApp because) 0.81 0.72 0.88

It is helpful for my professional future PA2 0.87 114.53
I want to provide information about me PA3 0.86 94.60
To post my works online PA4 0.82 71.49
Social interaction 0.65 0.74 0.85
It helps me to connect with different people SI2 0.83 57.39
I want to present information about a special SI3 0.89 100.80
interest of mine
Information sharing 0.60 0.70 0.82
I want to share information that may be of use or IS2 0.80 44.79
interest to others
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I want to present professional details about myself IS3 0.88 78.24

Extraversion (I see myself as someone who) 0.81 0.57 0.86
Is talkative EX2 0.77 51.66
Is inventive EX5 0.76 47.01
Values artistic, aesthetic experiences EX6 0.73 38.57
Generates a lot of enthusiasm EX7 0.79 58.36
Likes to reflect, play with abstract ideas EX8 0.73 39.37
Openness to experience (I see myself as someone who) 0.71 0.63 0.83
Is open and sociable OTE4 0.79 43.74
Has an active imagination OTE5 0.78 39.13
Has an assertive personality OTE6 0.82 50.94
Satisfaction 0.87 0.60 0.89
WhatsApp is part of my every day activity S1 0.77 54.52
I am proud to tell people that Im’ on WhatsApp S2 0.76 55.98
WhatsApp has become part of my daily routine S3 0.79 65.06
I feel out of touch when I haven’t logged onto S4 0.77 60.36
WhatsApp for a while
Feel I’m part of WhatsApp community S5 0.81 82.94
I would be sorry if WhatsApp shuts down S6 0.74 53.92
Bonding social capital 0.83 0.74 0.89
I feel I’m part of various groups in WhatsApp BSC1 0.85 97.69
Interacting with people on my WhatsApp BSC3 0.83 83.80
Group/Community makes me feel like a part of a
larger community
I come into contact with new people all the time BSC4 0.91 157.89
on WhatsApp
Bridging social capital 0.78 0.69 0.87
There are several people on WhatsApp I trust to solve BGSC1 0.83 82.35
my problems with
If I need an emergency loan of Rs1000, I know BGSC2 0.83 81.26
someone I can turn for help
There is someone I can turn for advice about BGSC3 0.85 97.92
making important decision
Maintaining social capital 0.86 0.78 0.91
I’d be able to find out about events in another town MSC1 0.86 92.13
from a high school acquaintance living there through
Table II. WhatsApp
Measurement model If needed, I could ask a high school acquaintance MSC2 0.91 144.25
estimation (Loadings, to do a small favor for me
t-values, α, AVE and I’d be able to stay with a high school acquaintance MSC3 0.89 128.87
CR values) if traveling to a different city
 MIM satisfaction (H5: β ¼ 0.12, t ¼ 4.30) were significant as predicted. Thus, the Role of perceived
relationships between perceived benefits, personality traits, and MIM satisfaction were benefits and
found to be significant, supporting H1 to H5. Similarly, the relationship between personality traits
satisfaction and social capital was significant (H6: β ¼ 0.59, t ¼ 27.16), supporting H6. In the
full mediation structural model, we controlled for demographic variables such as age,
gender, duration of usage, and Gen X and Gen Y (Becker et al., 2016). Only Gen X and Y
(β ¼ 0.15, t ¼ 4.73) were found to be significant. Table IV shows the full mediation
model results.
Results of the partial mediation model showed MIM satisfaction mediated the
relationships between professional advancement and social capital (t ¼ 7.58), social
interaction and social capital (t ¼ 5.101), information sharing and social capital (t ¼ 2.48),
extraversion and social capital (t ¼ 3.68), and openness to experience and social capital
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(t ¼ 4.11). Partial mediation results supported H7a and H7b. However, results identified
significant positive direct effects of perceived benefits (professional advancement, social
interaction, and information sharing), and personality traits (extraversion, and openness to
experience) on social capital. Therefore, MIM satisfaction partially mediated the
relationships between perceived benefits, personality traits and social capital. Table V
presents the mediation analysis results.
In the structural model, f 2, R2 and Q2 values were assessed. The Cohen’s f square ( f2)
values were assessed to know the true impact of predictor on the outcome. Based on the

Constructs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. Professional advancement 0.85

2. Social interaction 0.57 0.86
3. Information sharing 0.68 0.62 0.84
4. Extraversion 0.3 0.33 0.29 0.76
5. Openness to experience 0.27 0.32 0.29 0.62 0.8
6. Satisfaction 0.53 0.49 0.47 0.36 0.35 0.77
7. Bonding social capital 0.46 0.49 0.48 0.34 0.34 0.59 0.86
8. Bridging social capital 0.42 0.44 0.4 0.37 0.34 0.49 0.56 0.83
9. Maintaining social capital 0.43 0.46 0.43 0.43 0.4 0.48 0.44 0.53 0.89 Table III.
Note: Diagonal values are square root of AVE and lower half of the table values are inter-construct correlations Discriminant validity

Path relationships b t-values f2 Significance

Hypothesized relationships
H1: Professional advancement → Satisfaction 0.30 9.02 0.06 Significant
H2: Social interaction→ Satisfaction 0.18 5.71 0.03 Significant
H3: Information sharing → Satisfaction 0.09 2.56 0.006 Significant
H4: Extraversion → Satisfaction 0.11 3.88 0.01 Significant
H5: Openness to experience → Satisfaction 0.12 4.30 0.01 Significant
H6: Satisfaction → Social capital 0.59 27.16 0.45 Significant
Control variables
Age → Social capital 0.01 0.22 0.00 Not significant
Duration of usage → Social capital ‒0.01 0.55 0.00 Not significant Table IV.
Generation X and Y → Social capital 0.15 4.73 0.01 Significant Full mediation
Gender → Social capital 0.01 0.33 0.00 Not significant model – β value,
Notes: β ¼ Beta (Standardized Regression Coefficients), f 2 ¼ Effect size t-value and f 2 value
 APJML effect size values (0.02 – weak; 0.15 – moderate; 0.35 – strong effect) (Hair et al., 2011, 2013),
only MIM satisfaction had a high impact on social capital (see Table IV). Then, R2 value was
assessed to measure the fitness of a hypothesized model. The values indicated that
professional advancement, social interaction, information sharing, extraversion and openness
to experience explained 37 percent of the variance in MIM satisfaction. Similarly, satisfaction
explained 41 percent of the variance in social capital. Finally, Q2 value was assessed to
identify the predictive relevance of the model. In the hypothesized model, predictive relevance
was achieved as Q2 values of satisfaction (0.20) and social capital (0.19) exceeded the cut-off
limit of zero (Hair et al., 2016). Table VI signifies R2, adjusted R2 and Q2 values.

5. Discussion and implications

The purpose of this study is to propose and empirically validate an integrated conceptual
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model that hypothesizes the relationships among U&G theory, personality traits, MIM
usage and social capital. This study examines the relationships among professional
advancement, social interaction, information sharing, extraversion, openness to experience,
MIM satisfaction and social capital behavior. Results of this study show a positive
significant effect among these relationships. Furthermore, the study tests the mediating
effect of MIM satisfaction between benefits, traits, and sociality, revealing partial mediation
effect of MIM satisfaction.
H1 reveals that professional advancement has a significant positive relationship with
MIM satisfaction. This indicates that users use MIM platform to show updates on their
professional achievement, advance their career options, and to share documents and views
in a professional environment (Aharony, 2015a; Verhagen et al., 2015). The result of H2
signifies that social interaction has a positive effect on MIM satisfaction. This means that
users like MIM platform to interact with their peers, community, batch mates and various
groups, and so they feel social presence and connection with virtual communities (Ha et al.,
2015). H3 indicates that information sharing positively affects MIM satisfaction. This
reflects that MIM users try to share their knowledge on topics such as politics, sports, and
media and receive information in the form of messages, documents and videos in a virtual
environment (Karlinsky-Shichor and Zviran, 2016; Wang and Song, 2017). H4 shows that
extraversion has a significant positive effect on MIM users’ satisfaction. This reveals that
the users who are gregarious, assertive, friendly and sociable get satisfaction by using MIM
applications (Butt and Phillips, 2008; Cho and Park, 2014). H5 indicates that openness to
experience improves users’ satisfaction levels. MIM users who wish to receive new

Hypotheses Indirect effect t-value LL UL

H7a – Professional advancement → Satisfaction → Social capital 0.091 7.587 0.068 0.115
H7a – Social interaction → Satisfaction → Social capital 0.057 5.101 0.037 0.081
H7a – Information sharing → Satisfaction → Social capital 0.028 2.487 0.006 0.052
H7b – Extraversion→ Satisfaction → Social capital 0.035 3.681 0.017 0.054
Table V. H7b – Openness to experience → Satisfaction → Social capital 0.036 4.111 0.019 0.055
Mediation analysis Notes: LL, Lower Limit; UL, Upper Limit

Variables R2 Adjusted R2 Q2
Table VI.
R2, adjusted Satisfaction 0.37 0.37 0.20
R2 and Q2 Social capital 0.41 0.41 0.19
 information in the form of texts, videos and documents use MIM tools (Hsiao et al., 2016). Role of perceived
H6 represents that MIM satisfaction has a positive effect on social capital. This represents benefits and
that satisfaction with MIM allows the users to bond with family and close friends; to bridge personality traits
relationships among their co-workers and classmates; and to maintain relationship with
people who are separated due to external and geographical changes in their life (Aharony,
2015a, b; Sheer and Rice, 2017). At last, H7a and H7b show that MIM users’ satisfaction has
a partial mediation effect between benefits, traits and social capital. This is in line with
studies such as Hsiao et al. (2016) and Huang et al. (2014), where users’ satisfaction partially
mediates benefits, traits and social capital.
This study contributes to MIM literature in many ways. The first contribution of this
study stems from integrating three significant and relevant theories in MIM context. This
research is the first attempt to integrate U&G theory, personality traits and social capital
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paradigm to investigate customers’ MIM experience. Different from prior research that
solely focused on a single theory to examine MIM usage (Karapanos et al., 2016), this
research integrates key three theories into a conceptual model to respond to current
literature gap. This study combines different dimensions of benefits of MIM usage and
individual personality dimensions in MIM context and the findings are consistent with
previous studies (e.g. Verhagen et al., 2015). Second, this research examines all three
elements of social capital paradigm: bonding, bridging and maintaining, which have
hitherto remained largely unexplored in social media and MIM literature. In spite of
the importance of maintained social capital, prior social media research has studied bonding
and bridging, leaving maintained social capital (e.g. Sheer and Rice, 2017). Each of the three
elements is different in social perspective (Ellison et al., 2007) and it is important to
investigate them as a response variable of social media or MIM usage, where social
interactions play a key role (e.g. Karapanos et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2014). Third, this study
focuses on the specific study context, India. Even though market for smartphone and MIM
apps have sky rocketed over the past few years (Choudhary, 2015; Swapana and
Padmavathy, 2017), Indian MIM users have received little attention, requiring close
examination due to the enormous opportunities with Indian customers, investigating factors
that influence Indians to use MIM is of particular interest to smartphone industry and
mobile app developers for their market growth (Chang et al., 2016). At last, this study
investigates the mediating effect of MIM users’ satisfaction between benefits, traits and
social capital, contributing to MIM literature. Due to inconsistent results in prior research,
investigating possible mediators in the relationship between MIM benefits and social capital
is necessary (Kim et al., 2010).
In addition to theoretical implications, this research provides valid practical implications
to MIM companies and IT sectors. MIM companies promote IM app usage by
communicating that people use MIM apps to communicate, socialize and stay connected
with virtual communities. Our study findings support this fact that professional
environment, information sharing and social interaction play an important role in driving
MIM app’s popularity. Thus, our study findings indicate that the popularity of MIM
depends on how well the app functions to send and receive messages, to create groups and
post information, and to enable video and voice calls for interactions. This implies MIM app
developers to design user-friendly app, quality voice and video call, security encrypted
messages (Powell, 2009; Tapscott, 2008), recalling feature in text messaging, location
sharing, interactive, high-tech and faster apps in order to enhance user level of interactivity.
Such features will enable users to chat with friends, groups, and peers with fun and safety,
which will increase the reputation of an MIM app in social interactions. The success of
WhatsApp in India is based on its periodical upgradations and safety features such as
recalling text messaging. In addition, this research indicates that people who are willing to
socialize, and open to have groups and chats are more interested in MIM apps. This implies
 APJML the developers to target such group of people to instigate the use of MIM apps. This study
results also show that satisfied MIM users would love to keep using MIM apps to bridge
relationships, create bonding, and maintain relationships in virtual communities.
This suggests MIM companies to continue their constant upgradation in their app
development for ease-of-use and continue to keep it free for downloading using mobile data.
This will encourage complete utilization of MIM among virtual communities
(Cho and Hung, 2015; Ogara et al., 2014).

6. Limitations and future research directions

This research has some limitations. First, the hypothesized relationships were tested using a
cross-sectional research design. To enhance the generalizability of the findings, longitudinal
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research should be used by future researchers to test the research model of this study.
Future researchers may replicate the study using broader and cross-sectional segments for
enhanced reliability and validity. Secondly, this research focused on only one MIM app,
WhatsApp. Thus, care should be taken when generalizing the results of this study to other
tools in the MIM platform, as latest mobile-messaging apps such as Hike, WeChat and Viber
are usually equipped with new features and regional preferences also exist in the choice of
MIM (Ifinedo, 2016). Third, this study model was tested only in single country and future
researchers may examine the model in other country settings or compare different cultures.
Future researchers can consider moderating effect of generation, age, and gender to bring
new insights. Other factors such as TAM variables, hedonic, and utilitarian value, and
media frequency can be considered as antecedents to MIM usage ( Jiang and Deng, 2011; Lin
and Lu, 2015). Further, exploring factors that conceptualize MIM app adoption will be an
essential and imperative future research avenue.

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About the authors

Chandrasekaran Padmavathy is Assistant Professor at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore,
India. Her teaching interests embrace in Research Methods, Digital Marketing, and Consumer
Behavior. With her research interests in with her research interest in e-commerce, CRM, and mobile
apps, her work appears in International Journal of Bank Marketing, International Journal of Customer
Relationship Marketing and Management and International Journal of E-Business Research.
Chandrasekaran Padmavathy is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
cpadma85@gmail.com
Seonjeong (Ally) Lee is Assistant Professor at Kent State University. Focusing on service marketing,
her research focus includes persuasion strategies, experience marketing and consumer well-being.
Her work appears in such journals as the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, International Journal
of Hospitality Management, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and Journal of Services Marketing.
Murugan Pattusamy is working as Assistant Professor at School of Management Studies,
University of Hyderabad, India. He has published articles in Social Science Citation indexed journals
and presented papers at international and national conferences. His research interests are in the
domains of work–family interference and educational research.
Mukesh Kumar Dey was Student in the School of Electronics & Communication Engineering at
Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India. He has undertaken various marketing and
electronics based projects. His field of interest includes consumer and IT marketing, along with
electronics domain, such as VLSI. He was awarded the star performer in the Winter Training Program-
2015 for VLSI & VHDL Course by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Bengaluru.
Murali Swapana is Doctoral Candidate at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, India.
Her teaching interests include digital marketing, e-commerce and consumer behavior. Her research
interests include scale development, e-commerce and mobile applications.

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