| Through a social cognitive theoretical orientation, this study aims to identify and illustrate processes and elements central to blog maintenance intentions. A structural model has been proposed to explain American and Chinese bloggers' blog maintenance intentions. The structural model is based on the assumptions that cognitive factors (blogging self-efficacy, positive outcome expectations for blogging, and negative outcome expectations for blogging), online posting anxiety, and general anxiety tendencies (writing anxiety and social anxiety) affect one another and therefore help in predicting blog maintenance intentions. The original contribution of this dissertation research is in the application of social cognitive explanations of anxiety to the realm of computer-mediated communication.;A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodology was employed to test the structural model. Three studies were conducted. In study 1, in-depth interviews were used to examine the nature of blogging among American and Chinese bloggers. In particular, four new concepts are introduced---(a) blogging self-efficacy, (b) positive outcome expectations for blogging, (c) negative outcome expectations for blogging and (d) online posting anxiety. Ten American bloggers and 16 Chinese bloggers were interviewed online about their beliefs pertaining to these four concepts.;Study 2 applied a pre-test and post-test survey design to investigate the reliabilities and validities of the newly developed measures. A snowball sampling method was used to recruit bloggers in America and China. Eighty-seven American bloggers and 70 Chinese bloggers participated in the pre-test online survey. Among these, 58 American and 53 Chinese bloggers completed the post-test online survey after two weeks. A psychometric analysis was also conducted. Two reliability measures namely the Cronbach's coefficient a and test-retest reliability were calculated. The content validity, criterion-related validity, and construct validity were examined. The results showed that these new scales demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity measures.;The purpose of the main study was to test the proposed 16 hypotheses. One hundred and forty-five American and 178 Chinese bloggers were recruited through a purposive sampling method. Structural equation modeling technique was employed to test the proposed model and four alternative models. The model with blog maintenance intentions as the dependent variable showed the best fit.;In summary, the structural model demonstrated the process through which various social cognitive variables contribute to online posting anxiety and blog maintenance intentions in two cultures. |
