Research On The Factors Affecting Users' Usage Of Social Network Service

As the development of information technology and the continual innovation of the e-commerce model, Social Network Service (SNS) is emerging as one of the most popular online services. Based on the social tires or social network theory, SNS can help users to create and extend their inter-personal relationship network, and further meets various needs during users' social interaction. In other words, SNS is a kind of online services which can facilitate users' distributed communication. Although current SNS platforms have already owned a huge collection of users, however, the churn of users is becoming a serious problem facing by each platform because of the homogenization of service and ambiguity of business model. Thus it is urgent to undermine the factors which influence the usage of SNS.On the basis of analyzing the current studies on information system adoption and the characteristics of SNS, this paper incorporates flow theory with UTAUT model and constructs a theoretical model to explain users'SNS usage behavior. This model is then tested through survey method.In this study, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence positively influence the usage intention of SNS, however, the influence of facilitate condition on usage intention is not significant. Moreover, usage behavior and facilitate condition significantly influence actual usage behavior. Perceived enjoyment positively influence flow experience of SNS, but personal innovation does not significantly influence flow experience of SNS. What's more, flow experience does influence performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Lastly, this paper points out some suggestion to both researchers and SNS service providers based on these findings.This paper is supported by Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Humanities and Social Sciences project (09YJA870014)...