Research On Influence Factors In Wechat User Continuance Behavior Based On The Perspective Of Information Acquisition And Interpersonal Communication

AS one of the earliest acknowledged and accepted by netizens among free Internet services, instant messaging applications have obtained a huge netizen base after used generously by the majority of Internet users more than a decade. But with the development of information technology and the advent of the era of mobile Internet, IM has been successfully transferred and expanded from the PC terminal to the mobile terminal. Wechat was just born in January 2011, which belongs to the new mobile IM apps. During the 4 years from 2011 to now, the number of Wechat users has broken through 800 million. If QQ is a new continent exploited by traditional Internet, then WeChat should be a invasion and subversion of the old continent that broughted by mobile Internet. As a combination of instantaneity, sociability, mobility and entertainment, WeChat has been getting a huge success since the launch.With the continuous expansion of user scales, the commercial value of WeChat has been increasingly emerging, and the future profit space will be immeasurable. However, it's not enough to depend on vast amounts of user scales for the realization of profit, users' continuance behavior must be taken into account. Although the current domest ic market of mobile IM compets fiercly, it is not necessary to pay any price to choose or abandon a mobile IM service, which then lead to more difficult to continue his/her user behavior for Wechat users. So in this context, it appears to be very urgent and necessary to study the influence factors in users' continuance behavior.Based on the Expectation-Confirmation Model(ECM-ISC), this paper tries to find out the key factors which affect users to constantly use WeC hat for the sake of obtaining informantion and communicating with friends. Meanwhile, considered the Theory of Relational Communication, this study regarded Wechat as an information acquisition tool and interpersonal communication tool, and attempted to explain its natural correlation between information behavior and interpersonal relationship.With the purpose of finding out the factors in users' continuance behavior, our studies introduced “Perceived Needs” and “Perceived Popularity” from “Weighted and Calculated Needs for New Media” and “User Habit” from Limayem's research on the basis of ECM-ISC, then built a conceptual model about the continuance behavior of Wechat users. Next,according to questionnaires collecting and data sorting, we carried on factor analysis, reliability and validity analysis, and regression analysis with the use of SPSS20.0 software, so as to test the rationality of the model.The research results not only show that user subjective cognition significantly influences his/her own continuance behavior while habit is one of the important factors affecting between intention and behavior, but aslo show that continuance behavior can be measured by such two dimension: information behavior and interpersonal communication behavior. Final test results prove that user subjective cognit ion affects continuance behavior throug the intermediary process of behavioral intention or directly influence. And there is a close relationship between users' information behavior and communication behavior which complement each other. This paper offered some suggestions for the strategy formulation of Wechat.