Effects of User Perception Factors on Social Network Website Loyalty
Abstract
The popularity of social networking websites has been a focus of research in various disciplines to examine its social impact from different vantage points. This study used Facebook, a leading social networking platform, as the target to explore the direct and indirect user perception factors contributing to user website loyalty. We assessed how the fun factor, suggested by O’Reilly as one of the major defining characteristics of Web 2.0, directly affected social presence, perceived privacy risk, self-disclosure, and website. We also investigated the indirect impacts of social presence, perceived privacy risk, and self-disclosure to establish a chain of effects leading to website loyalty. A web-enabled questionnaire survey collected the perception of Facebook users in Taiwan. After assessing the appropriateness of research data with Common Method Variance analysis, reliability analysis, and validity analysis, the study examined the cause-effect relationships between the research constructs with the structural equations modeling software AMOS. The analysis validated four dimensions of the theoretical model: (1) the positive direct effect of enjoyment on social presence as well as website loyalty, and indirect effect of enjoyment on perceived privacy risk and self-disclosure through social presence, (2) the negative impact of social presence on perceived privacy risk and positive impact of social presence on self-disclosure, (3) the negative impact of perceived privacy risk on self-disclosure, and (4) positive impact of self- disclosure on website loyalty. The article concludes with theoretical implications of our findings and lessons learned for practicing managers. Key Phrases: Website Loyalty, Social Media, Enjoyment, Social Presence, Self-Disclosure, Privacy Risk Perception