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Social influence or personal preference? Examining the determinants of usage

intention across social media with different sociability

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DOI: 10.1177/0266666915603224

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Article
Information Development
1–15
Social influence or personal preference? ª The Author(s) 2015
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Examining the determinants of usage DOI: 10.1177/0266666915603224
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intention across social media with
different sociability

Nan Wang
Wuhan University

Yongqiang Sun
Wuhan University

Abstract
Previous studies have identified that social influence and personal preference are two key mechanisms to
understand users’ social media adoption behavior. However, whether or not these two mechanisms play equal
roles under different contexts has rarely been empirically investigated. To fill this gap, in this study, we propose
sociability as a criterion to classify social media and examine the determinants of usage intention across social
media with different sociability. An empirical study of 118 low-sociability and 123 high-sociability social media
users found that social influence factors play a more important role for high-sociability media users while atti-
tude has stronger impacts on intention for low-sociability media users. Implications for research and practice
are also discussed.

Keywords
social media, social influence, theory of reasoned action, sociability, we-intention, Weibo, Wechat, China

Received June 4, 2015. Accepted for publication August 7, 2015.

Introduction following the emergence of a new social media ser-

Social media services, which refer to a group of
applications based on the Web 2.0 techniques and
user generated content (UGC), including a lot of
well-known tools such as Facebook and Twitter
(Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010), are rapidly changing
the way we are sharing information and keeping
social relationships (Kane et al., 2014; Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2010; Hanna et al., 2011). Following the
proliferation of social media services, the competi-
tion between different social media service providers
has become more and more stiff. As Kaplan and
Haenlein have stated, social media is ‘‘a very active
and fast-moving domain’’ so that ‘‘what may be up-
to-date today could have disappeared from the vir-
tual landscape tomorrow’’ (Kaplan and Haenlein,
2010: 64-65). According to a report by China Inter-
net Network Information Center (CNNIC) in 2014,
vice, namely Wechat (a social media service based
on the famous instant messaging tool QQ), the num-
ber of users of Weibo (a Twitter-like service in
China) decreased from 281 million by the end of
2012 to 253 million by the end of 2013, with a
decrease rate of nearly 10%. The report further
showed that about 37.4% of the users who chose to
leave Weibo switched to Wechat. Therefore, it is
interesting to understand why two different types
of social media have different destinies and the
underlying mechanisms behind this change.
Corresponding author:
Yongqiang Sun, School of Information Management, Wuhan
University, Wuchang District, Wuhan, Hubei, China. Tel. 86-
18672389832.
Email: syq@mail.ustc.edu.cn

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2 Information Development
Previous studies on social media adoption have
investigated two key mechanisms underlying the
social media adoption behavior. The first mechanism,
based on the technology acceptance theories (Venka-
tesh, 2000; Venkatesh et al., 2003; Venkatesh et al.,
2012), focuses on a variety of individual perceptions
about social media, such as perceived usefulness, per-
ceived enjoyment or the overall perception attitude
(e.g., Lin and Lu, 2011; Sun et al., 2015). In contrast,
the second mechanism, based on the social influence
model (Kelman, 1958; Dholakia et al., 2004), views
social media adoption behavior as a collective action
and proposes that user behaviors are affected by others
through three social influence processes, namely, com-
pliance, internalization and identification. Although
previous studies have provided certain empirical sup-
port for the impacts of both social influence and per-
sonal preference factors, whether or not these two
mechanisms have equal contributions to user behaviors
has been rarely empirically tested.
Further, prior studies on social media adoption tend
to treat social media as a broad term to apply to a vari-
ety of technologies, including microblogs and social
networking sites (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Kane
et al., 2014), while the distinctions between and the
user behaviors under different types of social media
have been rarely examined. Kaplan and Haenlein
(Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010) have proposed that
social media can be classified into different categories
according to two dimensions, namely: social presence /
media richness and self-presentation / self-disclosure.
Thus, it is interesting to know whether or not users will
behave differently in different types of social media
such as Weibo and Wechat.
Considering the two different explanatory
mechanisms and the distinctions between different
types of social media, the research objective of this
study is:
to explore the different roles of social influence and per-
sonal preference factors in different types of social
media (e.g., Weibo and Wechat).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In the
next section, previous studies on social media (e.g.,
theories, factors and typologies) are reviewed and the
research model and hypotheses are proposed. Then,
the survey study to test our research model is
described and the data analysis results are reported.
Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of
the study are discussed.
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Theoretical background
Social media adoption
Social media adoption is one of the most frequently
discussed issues in social media research (Ngai
et al., 2015). Previous studies view social media adop-
tion behavior from three major perspectives, includ-
ing the personal preference perspective, the social
influence perspective and the personality perspective
(as summarized in Table 1). The personal preference
perspective stresses the key values that users can gain
from the social media usage behavior and proposes
that when users’ personal needs are satisfied they will
be more likely to use social media. From this perspec-
tive, prior literature has investigated the impacts of
perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment based
on the Technology Acceptance Model (Lin and Lu,
2011), a variety of value perceptions including purpo-
sive value, self-discovery, maintaining interpersonal
interconnectivity, social enhancement, and entertain-
ment value based on use and gratification theory
(Cheung et al., 2011), and the overall perceptions
about consequences of using social media (e.g., atti-
tude) based on the Theory of Reasoned Action or the
Theory of Planned Behavior (Al-Debei et al., 2013).
In contrast, the social influence perspective argues
that ‘‘the use of social technologies can make sense
only when a group of individuals are willing to use
and continue to use the technology together’’ (Cheung
and Lee, 2010: 24), such that individual behaviors in
social media can be conceptualized as an intentional
social action (Cheung and Lee, 2010). Thus, we-
intention, which is defined as ‘‘commitment of an
individual to participate in joint action, and involves
in an implicit and explicit agreement between the par-
ticipants to engage in that joint action’’ (Tuomela,
1995: 2), is used to study online social activities.
Unlike individual intention, which describes an indi-
vidual act in isolation, we-intention ‘‘highlights the
individual commitment in collectivity and the social
nature of group action’’ (Cheung and Lee, 2010:
25), so it should be more appropriate to capture the
individual behavior in the social media context.
From this perspective, previous studies have iden-
tified three mechanisms to explain the social influ-
ence process, including compliance, internalization
and identification (Kelman, 1958). Specifically, com-
pliance process reflects the social influence based on
reward approaching or punishment aversion; interna-
lization process captures the social influence induced
by individuals’ acceptance of others’ beliefs; and
Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference
Table 1. Literature review on social media adoption.
Perspective Theory
Personal preference Technology Acceptance Model Perceived usefulness (Cheung et al., 2011; Lin and Lu, 2011;
Use and gratification theory Perceived enjoyment
Theory of Reasoned Action Value perceptions
Attitude
Social influence Social influence model
Theory of Reasoned Action
Personality Big-Five model
identification process describes the social influence
based on liking or respect of another person. The com-
pliance process is consistent with the mechanism
through which subjective norm influences individual
behaviors in the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA),
given that both of them capture the extent to which
individuals would like to comply with the expecta-
tions of significant others (Fishbein and Ajzen,
1975). Subjective norm is thus usually operationa-
lized as a construct to reflect the compliance process.
Considering that group norm refers to the shared val-
ues or goals among group members, it is appropriate
to be used to reflect the internalization process, which
is based on the similarity of values held by group
members (Cheung and Lee, 2010; Tsai and Bagozzi,
2014). Finally, Bagozzi and Lee (2002) conceive
social identity as the reflection of the identification
process because social identity describes cognitive
self-awareness of group membership, affective com-
mitment to the group and group-based self-esteem,
consistent with the internalization process. This oper-
ationalization is also widely used in many empirical
studies such as Cheung and Lee (2010) and Tsai and
Bagozzi (2014).
The third theoretical perspective focuses on the rela-
tionships between personality factors and social media
adoption behavior by drawing upon the Big-Five
model (Goldberg, 1990). Specifically, the Big-Five
model points out five broad personality traits, including
neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and
conscientiousness. Neuroticism as a measure affect and
emotional control captures the extent to which an indi-
vidual has good control over emotions. Extraversion
describes the extent to which one is adventurous,
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3
Factors Key References
Al-Debei et al., 2013)
Subjective norm (Cheung and Lee, 2010; Cheung et al., 2011;
Group norm Qin et al., 2011; Choi and Chung, 2013)
Social identity
Neuroticism (Hughes et al., 2012; Correa et al., 2010)
Extraversion
Openness
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
sociable and talkative. Openness-to-experience refers
to the extent to which one has broad interests and seeks
novelty. Agreeableness measures how friendly people
are, and conscientiousness refers to a person’s work
ethic, orderliness and thoroughness. Previous studies
have confirmed that these five personality factors are
related to users’ social media adoption behavior
(Hughes et al., 2012; Correa et al., 2010).
Because personality is difficult to be manipulated by
practitioners, in this study we pay more attention to the
factors relevant to personal preference and social influ-
ence. Specifically, consistent with Tsai and Bagozzi
(2014), we try to integrate the personal preference per-
spective and the social influence perspective by consid-
ering social influence factors and attitude, which is the
overall perception of individual values as the antece-
dents of users’ we-intentions to use social media.
Media sociability
Although social influence factors and attitude may
influence social media adoption intention, whether or
not their influential strengths vary across different types
of social media is unknown. To solve this problem,
we need to classify social media in terms of certain cri-
teria. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social
media can be categorized into a variety of types based
on two dimensions, as shown in Table 2.
The first dimension is termed as the social presence
/ media richness dimension, which is based on social
presence theory (Short et al., 1976) and media rich-
ness theory (Daft and Lengel, 1986). Specifically,
social presence theory proposes the intimacy (inter-
personal vs. mediated) and immediacy (asynchronous
4 Information Development

Table 2. Classification of social media (adapted from Kaplan and Haenlein (2010)).

Social presence / Media richness

Low Medium High

Self-presentation / High Blogs Social networking sites (e.g., Virtual social worlds (e.g., Second
Self-disclosure Facebook) Life)
Low Collaborative projects Content communities (e.g., Virtual game worlds (e.g., World of
(e.g., Wikipedia) YouTube) Warcraft)

vs. synchronous) of the medium as two key features
relevant to users’ perceptions of social presence, such
that individuals will feel higher social presence for a
interpersonal and synchronous medium than for a
mediated and asynchronous medium (Short et al.,
1976). Media richness theory assumes that media pos-
sess different abilities to solve ambiguity and reduce
uncertainty, such that rich media (e.g., video) may
deliver more information in a given time interval than
poor media (e.g., text) (Daft and Lengel, 1986).
Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) consider that media
richness and social presence are closely related, so
they take them together as one dimension to classify
social media. However, media richness and social
presence may capture different aspects of the medium.
For example, a video to introduce a digital product can
enhance consumers’ cognitive understanding of the
product, but cannot improve social interactions. In this
situation, high media richness may not necessarily lead
to high social presence. Similarly, social interactions
may be improved through some social support tools,
which are based on poor media (e.g., text). In this
regard, we would like to treat social presence and
media richness as two different dimensions and we
focus on the social presence dimension in this study.
The second dimension is called as self-disclosure /
self-representation, which captures the extent to
which the medium requires users to disclose their per-
sonal information or allows them to represent them-
selves (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). For example,
users can participate in collaborative projects in Wiki-
pedia without disclosing their personal information,
while users need to disclose much personal informa-
tion in social networking sites (e.g., Facebook). Here,
Wikipedia and Facebook reflect the media with
low self-presentation / self-disclosure and high self-
presentation / self-disclosure respectively. In our
study, because we focus on the self-disclosure tech-
nologies, which require users to disclose their per-
sonal information (Lowry et al., 2011), this
dimension is not applicable in our classification.
In this study we try to classify social media into dif-
ferent types according to the social presence percep-
tion generated when users interact with other users
via social media. Consistent with prior literature, we
use the term sociability (Phang et al., 2009; Preece,
2001) to capture this media characteristic. Sociability
refers to an online community feature that supports ‘‘a
state of being sociable’’, where community members
can feel pleasant when interacting with each other
through the supporting technology (e.g., social media)
(Phang et al., 2009; Preece, 2001). Although there are
many social media with different levels of sociability,
we try to take two social media tools namely Wechat
and Weibo in China as the representatives of high-
and low-sociability social media respectively. Specif-
ically, Weibo, which is also known as Sina Weibo, is
a microblogging service in China that enables users to
follow other users for pushed information and post or
forward information to others, just like Twitter. In
contrast, Wechat, which is initiated by Tencent.com,
integrates mobile instant messaging services with
social network services (like Facebook), enabling
users to share information with their friends. Their
distinctions can be summarized as shown in Table 3.
These two social media are different in tie symme-
try, tie strength, and network nature. Specifically,
Wechat, like Facebook, requires symmetrical rela-
tionships confirmed by both parties for a tie to exist,
while Weibo permits a tie to exist even if only one
person initiates it in terms of asymmetrical relation-
ships (Kane et al., 2014). In this way, Wechat builds
a closed space for friends to reciprocally share their
information, while Weibo develops an open space,
such that anyone who is interested in others’ informa-
tion can check their information directly without the
others’ permissions. Second, the relationships
between most Wechat users are based on strong ties
such as friendship (Granovetter, 1973) and their rela-
tionships in the social media are derived from their
offline relationships (Kane et al., 2014). In contrast,
the relationships between Weibo users are based on

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Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference
Table 3. Distinctions between low- and high-sociability media.
Wechat
Dimensions (e.g., high-sociability media)
Tie symmetry Bilateral / Symmetric
Tie strength Strong tie
Network nature Relationship network
weak ties, such that a relationship between users in
Weibo may not exist in real life (Kane et al., 2014).
Third, the network among Wechat users is a relation-
ship network which focuses on reciprocal social inter-
actions, while the network among Weibo users is an
information network that emphasizes on the sharing
of opinion or information (Hughes et al., 2012).
Therefore, when interacting with other members,
users will feel a stronger sense of being sociable in
Wechat than in Weibo, suggesting that it is appropri-
ate to use Wechat and Weibo to represent high- and
low-sociability social media respectively.
Considering the distinctions of social media in
sociability and the two perspectives to explain social
media adoption behavior (e.g., personal preference vs.
social influence), we develop our research model to
examine the relative influential strengths of social
influence factors and attitude under social media with
different sociability (see Fig. 1).
Hypotheses
Social influence factors
The impact of subjective norm on we-intention to use
social media can be supported by both the social influ-
ence model (Dholakia et al., 2004; Cheung and Lee,
2010) and the TRA (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). The
mechanism underlying the relationship between sub-
jective norm and we-intention relies on the compli-
ance process, which suggests that individuals would
like to comply with the expectations of persons whose
opinions are important to them. Within the social
media context, because users are more exposed to
other people’s influences through social interactions,
it is more possible for users to behave under social
pressures from others (Cheung and Lee, 2010;
Cheung et al., 2011). Therefore, we propose that
H1a: Subjective norm is positively associated with
we-intention to use social media.
According to the social influence model, group
norm can exert its impact on we-intention through the
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5
Weibo
(e.g., low-sociability media)
Unilateral / Asymmetric
Weak Tie
Information network
internalization process (Kelman, 1958). If an individ-
ual perceives that the values of other individuals are
congruent with her/his own value system, s/he will
internalize others’ opinions, take others’ evaluations
as her/his own evaluations, and conduct similar beha-
viors. Bagozzi and Dholakia (2002) argue that if a
person finds that s/he and other members share com-
mon values or goals, that person will be more likely to
commit to a joint action. The relationship between
group norm and we-intention has also been empiri-
cally confirmed in the social media context (Cheung
et al., 2011). Therefore, we propose that
H1b: Group norm is positively associated with we-
intention to use social media.
Previous studies have proposed to use social iden-
tity to reflect the identification process of social influ-
ence (Bagozzi and Lee, 2002). Specifically, social
identity is regarded as a second-order construct with
three components, cognitive, affective and evaluative
social identity (Ellemers et al., 1999). Cognitive
social identity refers to ‘‘a cognitive sense of the self
as a representative of a social category’’ (Tsai and
Bagozzi, 2014: 147) through the self-categorization
process, which is based on judgments on similarities
with other group members and dissimilarities with
non-members. Affective social identity refers to an
emotional involvement with the group or a feeling
of attachment and belongingness to the group (Tsai
and Bagozzi, 2014; Cheung and Lee, 2010). Evalua-
tive social identity refers to the evaluation of self-worth
(Ellemers et al., 1999) or group-based self-esteem
(Bagozzi and Lee, 2002) derived from membership.
When an individual has a strong social identity
toward the social media, s/he will be more likely
to commit to a joint action with other members
through identification processes (Tsai and Bagozzi,
2014; Cheung and Lee, 2010; Cheung et al., 2011).
Therefore, we propose that
H1c: Social identity is positively associated with we-
intention to use social media.
6 Information Development
Social Influence
Social
Subjective
Media Type
Norm
H3a-c
Group
Norm H1a-c
Social
Identity
Figure 1. Research model.
Attitude
The TRA suggests that individual behaviors or beha-
vioral intentions are determined by their evaluations
of the consequences of behaviors (Fishbein and Ajzen,
1975). Although the TRA was originally used to explain
I-intention, which captures individuals’ personal
actions (Cheung and Lee, 2010), in this study, we pro-
pose that we-intention, which describes an individual’s
intention to commit to a joint action, should be formed
based on his/her own desires to conduct the behavior
(Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014). Specifically, drawing upon
the use and gratification theory, Cheung et al. (2011)
have proposed that the fulfillment of a variety of per-
sonal needs can influence individuals’ we-intention to
use social media. Attitude, which reflects an overall eva-
luation of their value expectations, can be taken as a
proxy of the need fulfillment. Further, in their study
on knowledge contribution in virtual communities, Tsai
and Bagozzi (2014) explicitly include attitude as a
determinant of we-intention. Within the social media
context, we expect that attitude can influence we-
intention to use social media too. Thus, we propose that
H2: Attitude is positively associated with we-intention
to use social media.
Moderating role of social media type
Although social influence factors and personal prefer-
ence factors (e.g., attitude) can both influence users’
we-intention to use social media, their influential
strengths may vary across different social media.
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H4
Personal Preference
We -
Attitude
Intention H2
Consistent with Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), we have
proposed sociability as a criterion to classify social
media. For social media with low and high sociability,
social influence factors and attitude may play differ-
ent roles. In general, for high-sociability social media
(e.g., Wechat), in which members keep frequent
social interactions and close social relationships,
social influence factors may play a more important
role. In contrast, for low-sociability social media
(e.g., Weibo), where the social dependency among
users is relatively weak, a user’s behavior may be
largely determined by his/her personal preference or
attitude. This is consistent with Kaplan and Haenlein
(2010), who argue that the higher the social presence,
the larger the social influence that the group members
have on each other’s behavior.
Specifically, the influential strength of subjective
norm, which exerts its influence on we-intention
through the compliance process, depends on the
extent to which individuals can be aware of others’
expectations and would like to comply with those
expectations (Kelman, 1958). High-sociability social
media, compared to low-sociability social media,
enable users to keep frequent social interactions with
other users, facilitating them to learn each other’s
expectations (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Further,
because users in high-sociability social media have
developed strong social ties, they are more likely
to comply with others’ expectations. Thus, high-
sociability social media make users be more exposed
to social influences. In an empirical study, Logan
(2014) has found that normative beliefs are significant
Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference
for Facebook users, but insignificant for Twitter users,
where Facebook and Twitter can be classified as high-
and low-sociability social media respectively in terms
of Kaplan and Haenlein (2010). Thus, we propose that
H3a: Subjective norm has stronger impact on we-
intention to use social media for the social media with
high sociability than those with low sociability.
According to the social influence model, group norm
affects we-intention through the internalization process
(Kelman, 1958). A key to the internalization process
relies on the extent to which an individual shares com-
mon values or goals with other members and the extent
to which one would like to accept the shared values and
goals. High-sociability social media, compared to low-
sociability social media, enable users to interact and
exchange opinions with each other, facilitating the for-
mation of shared values or visions (Nahapiet and
Ghoshal, 1998). Through social interactions, users in
high-sociability social media may develop a more sim-
ilar decision-making pattern or cognitive style (Naha-
piet and Ghoshal, 1998), leading users to easily accept
the shared values. Thus, media sociability can facilitate
the internalization process and strengthen the impact of
group norm on we-intention. So we propose that
H3b: Group norm has stronger impact on we-intention
to use social media for the social media with high socia-
bility than for those with low sociability.
Social identity can influence we-intention through
the identification process (Kelman, 1958), which
relies on individuals’ respect to commitment and
attachment to the group. For high-sociability social
media, which require more social interactions during
usage, users like to pay more attention to the ongoing
relationships with other members, suggesting stronger
impact of social identity (Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014).
Further, compared to low-sociability social media,
high-sociability social media can enable users to form
a collectivistic rather than individualistic behavioral
orientation (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998), leading
them to care more about their social identities (Tsai
and Bagozzi, 2014). Therefore, we propose that
H3c: Social identity has stronger impact on we-intention
to use social media for the social media with high socia-
bility than for those with low sociability.
Unlike social influence factors, which play more
important roles for high-sociability social media, attitude
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7
is proposed to have stronger impact for low-sociability
social media. For users of low-sociability social media,
because the social interactions with other members are
not so frequent and the social ties between members are
relatively weak, they tend to adopt individualistic
decision making which is ‘‘regulated largely by indi-
vidual likes and dislikes and cost-benefit analyses’’
(Triandis et al., 1990: 1007), suggesting that attitude
plays a pivotal role in their decision making. In con-
trast, for users of high-sociability social media, their
decision making may heavily rely on other members’
opinions or social pressures, which engender a ‘‘have-
to-do’’ versus ‘‘want-to-do’’ mentality (Tsai and
Bagozzi, 2014). Therefore, we propose that
H4: Attitude has stronger impact on we-intention to use
social media for the social media with low sociability
than for those with high sociability.
Research method
Research setting and respondents
Two mobile social media applications, Wechat and
Weibo, were used in this study to examine the pro-
posed research model and hypotheses. Both of these
social media are widely used by Chinese users.
Wechat, which is provided by Tencent, integrates
instant messaging services with social network site
services, enabling users to keep frequent social inter-
actions with each other. In contrast, Weibo, which is
provided by Sina, is a microblogging service like
Twitter, enabling users to freely share information
through a broadcast mechanism. These two social
media can be used to reflect the high- and low-
sociability social media in terms of their differences
in tie symmetry, tie strength and network.
University students were treated as the target popula-
tion for this study because previous studies had shown
that university students are the major users of social
media (Cheung et al., 2011). According to the Research
Report on Chinese Social Media Users (2014) provided
by the China Internet Network Information Center
(CNNIC)1, 68.2% of social media users were aged
below 30 and 49.9% of them had the education level
of bachelor or above, suggesting that taking university
students as the targeted population was appropriate.
Data collection
A convenience sample of Wechat and Weibo users was
created by inviting student volunteers to participate in
8 Information Development

Table 4. Demographics.

Weibo WeChat

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

Gender Male 56 47.5 69 56.1

Female 62 52.5 54 43.9
Age 18 – 25 117 99.2 119 96.7
Above 25 1 0.8 4 3.3
Education Below bachelor 7 5.9 15 12.2
Bachelor 108 91.5 105 85.4
Master or above 3 2.5 3 2.4
Experience Below 6 months 8 6.8 22 17.9
6 months to 1 year 22 18.6 32 26.0
1 – 2 years 36 30.5 51 41.5
2 – 4 years 51 43.2 18 14.6
Above 4 years 1 0.8 0 0

our study. First, we informed 40 university students
about the survey in class and asked them to participate
in the survey voluntarily. An invitation message with
the URL of the online questionnaire was posted on
these initial volunteers’ Wechat and Weibo informa-
tion pages and could be forwarded to other users
through the snow-balling approach. Consistent with
prior research (Cheung and Lee, 2010), subjects were
told to follow an instruction to identify their friends
in the Wechat and Weibo and they needed to refer to
these friends when answering the questionnaire.
Finally, we obtained 123 and 118 valid responses for
Wechat and Weibo respectively. Their demographical
profiles were shown in Table 4.
Measures
All constructs were measured using multi-item scales
adapted from previous studies (see Appendix 1). Specif-
ically, the measures for we-intention, subjective norm,
social norm, and social identity were adapted from
Cheung and Lee (2010) and Tsai and Bagozzi (2014).
The measures for attitude were adapted from Ajzen
(1991) and Tsai and Bagozzi (2014). Seven-point scales
were used for all the measures. Since the survey
was conducted in China, all the instruments were
translated into Chinese, adopting a translation com-
mittee approach (Van de Vijver and Leung, 1997).
Data analysis
Partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to test
the research model. As a second-generation struc-
tural equation modeling (SEM) technique, it can
estimate the measurement model and the structural
simultaneously. Compared with covariance-based
SEM, PLS is more suitable for exploratory study and
relatively small samples (Hair et al., 2011; Gefen
et al., 2011). Thus, PLS was appropriate for the cur-
rent study. Specifically, SmartPLS was used as the
analytic tool. According to the two-step analytical pro-
cedures (Hair et al., 1998), the measurement model and
the structural model were evaluated respectively.
Measurement model
Reliability and validity of the constructs were assessed
in the measurement model. Reliability can be evaluated
by checking the composite reliability (CR) and average
variance extracted (AVE). As shown in Table 5 and
Table 6, the CR values for all the constructs were
above 0.9 and the AVE values for all the constructs
were above 0.8, beyond the suggested threshold values
0.7 and 0.5 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981), indicating that
these constructs had good reliabilities.
The validity assessment includes convergent and
discriminant validity assessments. Specifically, con-
vergent validity and discriminant validity can be eval-
uated by checking the loadings and cross-loadings. As
shown in Table 7 and Table 8, the loadings on the
expected constructs were significantly high (above
0.8) and the loadings on the expected constructs were
higher than the loadings on other constructs, suggest-
ing that the convergent and discriminant validities for
all the constructs were good (Fornell and Larcker,
1981). The discriminant validity also can be evaluated
by comparing the square roots of AVEs and correla-
tions. As shown in Table 5 and Table 6, the square
roots of AVEs for all the constructs were greater than

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Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference 9

Table 5. Reliability and correlations (Wechat).

CR AVE ASI CSI ESI GN SN UA WI

ASI 0.952 0.908 0.953

CSI 0.910 0.836 0.530 0.914
ESI 0.959 0.921 0.483 0.541 0.960
GN 0.928 0.865 0.459 0.590 0.491 0.930
SN 0.956 0.916 0.477 0.457 0.494 0.673 0.957
UA 0.933 0.823 0.447 0.254 0.184 0.244 0.286 0.907
WI 0.954 0.911 0.504 0.412 0.459 0.445 0.561 0.389 0.954
Note: ASI ¼ Affective social identity, CSI ¼ Cognitive social identity, ESI ¼ Evaluative social identity, GN ¼ Group norm,
SN ¼ Subjective norm, UA ¼ Attitude, WI ¼ We-intention.

Table 6. Reliability and correlations (Weibo).

CR AVE ASI CSI ESI GN SN UA WI

ASI 0.952 0.908 0.953

CSI 0.933 0.875 0.649 0.935
ESI 0.964 0.931 0.657 0.589 0.965
GN 0.933 0.875 0.646 0.720 0.576 0.826
SN 0.945 0.897 0.538 0.630 0.435 0.588 0.947
UA 0.950 0.863 0.420 0.444 0.382 0.527 0.538 0.929
WI 0.975 0.950 0.370 0.398 0.410 0.463 0.506 0.630 0.975
Note: ASI ¼ Affective social identity, CSI ¼ Cognitive social identity, ESI ¼ Evaluative social identity, GN ¼ Group norm,
SN ¼ Subjective norm, UA ¼ Attitude, WI ¼ We-intention.

the correlations, confirming that these constructs had Table 7. Cross loadings (Wechat).
good discriminant validities.
Consistent with prior studies (Cheung and Lee, ASI CSI ESI GN SN UA WI
2010; Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014), social identity was ASI1 0.952 0.504 0.442 0.403 0.439 0.433 0.462
conceptualized as a reflective second-order construct. ASI2 0.954 0.505 0.477 0.472 0.470 0.418 0.498
The loadings for the three first-order constructs were CSI1 0.450 0.908 0.467 0.519 0.430 0.194 0.348
above 0.8 for both Wechat and Weibo samples (see CSI2 0.516 0.921 0.520 0.558 0.407 0.267 0.404
Table 9). ESI1 0.446 0.535 0.959 0.457 0.463 0.157 0.431
ESI2 0.480 0.503 0.960 0.484 0.485 0.195 0.450
GN1 0.426 0.583 0.511 0.939 0.676 0.212 0.439
GN2 0.430 0.510 0.395 0.921 0.570 0.244 0.385
Structural model SN1 0.448 0.423 0.454 0.633 0.963 0.314 0.569
The PLS results for Wechat and Weibo samples are SN2 0.467 0.455 0.493 0.658 0.952 0.229 0.501
shown in Figure 2. UA1 0.413 0.235 0.197 0.221 0.278 0.906 0.361
The results showed that subjective norm had a sig- UA2 0.421 0.173 0.144 0.149 0.185 0.918 0.355
nificant effect on we-intention for Wechat (b ¼ 0.347, UA3 0.381 0.284 0.158 0.295 0.318 0.897 0.344
t ¼ 3.350) but had an insignificant effect on we- WI1 0.431 0.427 0.476 0.453 0.593 0.344 0.959
intention for Weibo (b ¼ 0.171, t ¼ 1.372), lending WI2 0.536 0.357 0.398 0.394 0.473 0.402 0.951
partial support to H1a.
Social identity was found to have a significant effect
on we-intention for Wechat (b ¼ 0.306, t ¼ 2.600) but t ¼ 0.180) and Weibo (b ¼ 0.052, t ¼ 0.315), so H1b
insignificant effect for Weibo (b ¼ 0.084, t ¼ 0.595), was not supported.
suggesting that H1c was partially supported. Attitude was found to have significant effects on
Group norm was found to have insignificant we-intention for both Wechat (b ¼ 0.186, t ¼ 2.277)
effects on we-intention for both Wechat (b ¼ 0.024, and Weibo (b ¼ 0.470, t ¼ 5.746), supporting H2.

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10 Information Development

Table 8. Cross loadings (Weibo). mediated by subjective norm (i.e., internalized nor-
mative beliefs) and/or attitude (i.e., internalized
ASI CSI ESI GN SN UA WI
value beliefs). To confirm this proposition, we con-
ASI1 0.952 0.624 0.595 0.608 0.539 0.416 0.335 ducted mediating effect analysis using Baron and
ASI2 0.954 0.613 0.657 0.623 0.486 0.385 0.370 Kenny’s (1986) method. As shown in Table 11, the
CSI1 0.578 0.935 0.571 0.673 0.562 0.399 0.378 relationship between group norm and we-intention
CSI2 0.636 0.936 0.531 0.673 0.617 0.432 0.367 was found to be fully mediated by attitude for
ESI1 0.635 0.569 0.965 0.545 0.416 0.363 0.415 Weibo, while this relationship was found to be fully
ESI2 0.634 0.567 0.965 0.567 0.422 0.373 0.376 mediated by subjective norm for Wechat. The indi-
GN1 0.665 0.689 0.601 0.925 0.539 0.512 0.398 rect effects of group norm on we-intention through
GN2 0.553 0.661 0.486 0.946 0.560 0.477 0.464
subjective norm and attitude were further analyzed
SN1 0.478 0.585 0.398 0.566 0.941 0.514 0.451
in Table 12 using Sobel’s z-test (Sobel, 1982). The
SN2 0.537 0.608 0.424 0.549 0.953 0.506 0.505
UA1 0.381 0.423 0.347 0.501 0.520 0.938 0.607 results showed that the indirect effect through sub-
UA2 0.401 0.413 0.314 0.502 0.524 0.934 0.589 jective norm was significant for Wechat (ab ¼ 0.232,
UA3 0.389 0.403 0.406 0.463 0.452 0.915 0.557 z ¼ 3.168), but insignificant for Weibo (ab ¼ 0.100,
WI1 0.359 0.370 0.418 0.447 0.511 0.605 0.975 z ¼ 1.352), with significant differences (D ¼ 0.132,
WI2 0.363 0.406 0.381 0.455 0.476 0.622 0.975 t ¼ 6.008). The indirect effect through attitude was
significant for Weibo (ab ¼ 0.249, z ¼ 4.200), but
insignificant for Wechat (ab ¼ 0.046, z ¼ 1.425), with
Table 9. Dimensions of social identity (SI). significant differences (D ¼ 0.203, t ¼ 33.384). These
results indicated that the impacts of group norm on
Wechat Weibo
we-intention were mediated by subjective norm and
Loadings t Loadings t attitude for high- and low-sociability social media
respectively.
Affective social identity .819 17.674 .887 30.850
Cognitive social identity .827 21.254 .852 23.869
Evaluative social identity .825 20.043 .866 26.974 Discussion and conclusion
The paper attempts to examine the different impacts of
Path coefficients were compared using Keil social influence factors and personal preference factors
et al.’s (2000) method (see Appendix 2) to test H3 across social media with different levels of sociability.
and H4. As shown in Table 10, except for group The data analysis results showed that these two types
norm, subjective norm (Db ¼ 0.176, t ¼ 11.902) and of factors explained over 40% of the variance of the
social identity (Db ¼ 0.222, t ¼ 13.276) were found dependent variable (e.g., we-intention) while their rela-
to have stronger impacts on we-intention for Wechat tive influential strengths varied across two social media.
than for Weibo, lending supports to H3a and H3c.
Attitude (Db ¼ 0.284, t ¼ 26.878) was found to have Implications for theory
stronger effects on we-intention for Weibo than for Several implications for theory can be derived from
Wechat, supporting H4. the study. First, this study has proposed to use socia-
bility as a criterion to classify self-disclosure social
media. Based on Kaplan and Haenlein’s (2010) two-
Post-hoc analysis dimension typology of social media, we find that the
As group norm was found to have insignificant effect self-disclosure / presentation dimension is not appli-
on we-intention for both Wechat and Weibo, the cable when focusing on self-disclosure social media,
post-hoc analysis tried to find potential explanations and that social presence and media richness should
for the insignificant effects. Specifically, previous be considered as two different dimensions rather than
studies have proposed that group norm influences one. Further, to better capture the features of social
we-intention through the internalization process media rather than users’ perceptions, we suggest to
(Cheung and Lee, 2010), which requires individuals use sociability rather than social presence as the cri-
to assimilate the group norm and transform it into terion to classify social media. More importantly,
their own normative or value beliefs. Therefore, the we have also found that media sociability can be
impact of group norm on we-intention may be reflected by tie symmetry, tie strength and network

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Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference 11

Social Influence

Subjective
Norm
.171 [.347**]

R2=.445 [.427]

Group .052 [-.024] We -

Attitude
Norm Intention
.470** [.186*]

.084 [.306**]
Social
Identity

Figure 2. PLS results.

Note: The numbers out and in the brackets denote the path coefficients for Weibo (low-sociability) and Wechat (high-
sociability) users respectively.
*p < .05, *p < .01.

Table 10. Cross-media comparison.

Weibo (N1¼118) Wechat (N2¼123)

Path coefficient (b1) Path coefficient (b2) D|b| tspooled

GN!WI .052 .024 .028 1.453

SI!WI .084 .306** .222** 13.276
SN!WI .171 .347** .176** 11.902
UA!WI .470** .186* .284** 26.878
Note: SI ¼ Social identity, GN ¼ Group norm, SN ¼ Subjective norm, UA ¼ Attitude, WI ¼ We-intention.
**p < .01, *p < .05.

Table 11. Mediating effect analysis.

(IV, M) ! DV

Media IV M DV IV ! DV IV ! M M! DV IV ! DV Mediating?

Weibo GN SN WI .463** .588** .358** .251* Partial

GN UA WI .463** .528** .536** .178 Full
Wechat GN SN WI .445** .675** .480** .123 Full
GN UA WI .445** .250** .298** .368** Partial
Note: GN ¼ Group norm, SN ¼ Subjective norm, UA ¼ Attitude, WI ¼ We-intention.
**p < .01, *p < .05.

nature. This classification and the underlying logic for
classification can be used in future research.
Second, we propose an integrated research model
of social media adoption by considering both the per-
sonal preference and social influence perspectives.
Social media users do not passively accept the social
influences exerted by the environment, but actively
balance their personal preferences and social influ-
ences. Therefore, this study theorizes and empirically
examines a research model that takes intentional

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12
Table 12. Indirect effect analysis (Sobel’s z test).
Wechat (N¼123)
IV!M M!DV ab
GN!SN!WI .674** .344** .232**
GN!UA!WI .249* .185* .046
Note: ab denotes the product of the path coefficients of IV!M and M!DV. **p < .01, *p < .05.
GN ¼ Group norm, SN ¼ Subjective norm, UA ¼ Attitude, WI ¼ We-intention.
social action as a joint result of social influence and
personal preference, enriching the social media adop-
tion literature.
Third, this is the first study that, to the best of our
knowledge, compares the influential strengths of
social influence factors and attitude across social
media with different sociability. Although prior stud-
ies have investigated user behaviors under either
high-sociability context (e.g., Facebook) or low-
sociability context (e.g., Twitter) (e.g., Cheung and
Lee, 2010; Al-Debei et al., 2013; Chen, 2013; Cheung
et al., 2011), there have been no studies empirically
comparing the relative influencing strengths of social
influence factors and attitude. Specifically, this study
indicates that social influence factors, including sub-
jective norm and social identity, have stronger
impacts on we-intention for high-sociability media,
while attitude has stronger effects on we-intention
for low-sociability media. Group norm is found to
have no significant direct effect on we-intention for
both low- and high-sociability media. The post-hoc
analysis further suggests that the relationship between
group norm and we-intention is mediated by subjective
norm for high-sociability media and by attitude for
low-sociability media. These findings advance the the-
oretical understanding on the antecedents of intentional
social action in social media by identifying the bound-
ary conditions under which each factor applies.
Implications for practice
The findings of the study also provide some insights
to practitioners. First, this study shows that both social
influence factors and attitude can affect social media
users’ intentional social actions. Thus, social media
service providers should improve the functions or
usability of social media to enhance users’ attitudes,
as well as set certain mechanisms to strengthen the
social relationships between users to leverage social
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Information Development
Weibo (N¼118)
IV!M M!DV ab Dab tspooled
.588** .170 .100 .132** 6.008
.528** .471** .249** .203** 33.384
influences. Second, this study reveals that social
influence factors and attitude exert different impacts
in different social media. Therefore, social media ser-
vice providers should recognize the differences of
social media in sociability and execute different stra-
tegies accordingly. For example, for low-sociability
social media (e.g., Twitter), service providers should
pay more attention to usability improvement.
Limitations and future research
There are several limitations to be noted when
applying the findings in future research. First, as this
study focuses on the relative strengths of social
influence and personal preference factors, several
other factors such as perceived behavioral control
in the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and
personality factors (Correa et al., 2010; Hughes
et al., 2012) have not been considered in this study.
Thus, future research can further include other
important factors to examine the robustness of our
study. Second, this study takes two Chinese social
media tools (e.g., Wechat and Weibo) as the research
settings. Whether or not the conclusions can be
applied for other social media with different socia-
bility in other countries should be further tested in
future research. Third, consistent with prior studies
(Cheung and Lee, 2010), a student sample rather
than a professional sample was used in data collec-
tion. This may limit the generalizability of the con-
clusions and require further investigations in
future. Finally, in this study, behavioral intention
rather than actual behavior was taken as the depen-
dent variable. Previous studies have shown that
behavioral intention and behavior may not be consis-
tent (Limayem et al., 2007), leading researchers to
consider other important factors such as habit when
examining the antecedents of social media adoption
behaviors.
Wang and Sun: Social influence or personal preference 13

Appendix 1. Constructs and measures

Constructs Measures Source

We-Intention (WI) WI1: I intend that our group (i.e., the group that I identified above (Cheung and Lee, 2010;
interacts on [Weibo / Wechat] together sometime during the Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014)
next 2 weeks.
WI2: We (i.e., the group that I identified above) intend to interact on
[Weibo / Wechat] together sometime during the next 2 weeks.
Subjective Norm (SN) SN1: Most people who are important to my life think I should not / (Cheung and Lee, 2010;
should use [Weibo / Wechat] with friends sometime during the Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014)
next 2 weeks.
SN2: Most people who are important to me would disapprove /
approve of me using [Weibo / Wechat] with friends sometime
during the next 2 weeks.
Group Norm (GN) Interacting together sometime within the next 2 weeks with your (Cheung and Lee, 2010;
group in [Weibo / Wechat] can be considered to be a goal. For Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014)
each of the people listed below, please estimate the strength to
which each holds the goal (strong – weak)
GN1: Average of the strength of group members’ goal
GN2: Strength of self’s goal
Social Identity (SI) Cognitive Social Identity (CSI) (Cheung and Lee, 2010;
CSI1: Please indicate to what degree your self-image overlaps with Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014)
the identity of the group of friends as you perceive it.
CSI2: How would you express the degree of overlap between your
personal identity and the identity of the group you mentioned
above when you are actually part of the group and engaging in
group activities?
Affective Social Identity (ASI)
ASI1: How attracted are you to the group you mentioned above?
ASI2: How strong would you say your feelings of belongingness are
toward the group you mentioned above?
Evaluative Social Identity (ESI)
ESI1: I am a valuable member of the group that I mentioned above.
ESI2: I am an important member of the group that I mentioned above.
Attitude (UA) Please express your attitude toward using [Weibo / Wechat] to (Tsai and Bagozzi, 2014;
interact with your friends during the next two weeks: Ajzen, 1991)
UA1: Foolish – Wise
UA2: Bad – Good
UA3: Harmful - Beneficial

Appendix 2. Path coefficients comparison

method (Keil et al., 2000)
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Spooled ¼ f½ðN1  1Þ=ðN1 þ N2  2Þ  SE12 þ ½ðN2  1Þ=ðN1 þ N2  2Þ  SE22 g
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
t ¼ ðPC1  PC2 Þ=½Spooled  ð1=N1 þ 1=N2 Þ
Where
Spooled¼ pooled estimator for the variance
t¼ t-statistic with N1 þ N2  2 degrees of freedom
Ni ¼ Sample size of dataset for group i
SEi¼Standard error of path in structural model of group i
PCi¼Path coefficient in structural model of group i

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14
Note
1. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/sqbg/201408/
P020150401351309648557.pdf
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About the authors
Nan Wang is an associate professor of the School of Infor-
mation Management, Wuhan University. She obtained her
PhD degree from the City University of Hong Kong and
the University of Science and Technology of China. Her
research interests include e-commerce and social media. Her
work has appeared in several international journals including
Decision Support Systems and International Journal of
Information Management. Contact: School of Information
Management, Wuhan University, Wuchang District, Wuhan,
Hubei, China. Email: kewang@mail.ustc.edu.cn
Yongqiang Sun is an associate professor of the School of
Information Management, Wuhan University. He obtained
his PhD degree from the City University of Hong Kong and
the University of Science and Technology of China. His
research interests include e-commerce, knowledge man-
agement, virtual community, and human-computer interac-
tions. His work has appeared in several international journals
including Information Systems Research, Journal of AIS,
Decision Support Systems, and Information & Management.
Contact: School of Information Management, Wuhan Uni-
versity, Wuchang District, Wuhan, Hubei, China. Email:
syq@mail.ustc.edu.cn. Tel.: 86-18672389832.