The Investigation on Determinants of User Acceptance of Social Networking Service - Research Proposal Example

Research Methods A study on determinants of user acceptance of social networking service (SNS) Qiyu Shen Number: S1503730 submission: 20 April 2015 Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 1.0 Introduction 2 3.0 Objectives 4 4.0 Critical literature review 5 5.0. Research Methodology 8 5.2 Research Approach 8 5.3 Research strategies 9 5.5 Data collection method 9 6.0. Analysis 9 6.1. Perspective 9 1.0 Introduction The high rate of technological advance and the dominance of the internet have played a key role in transforming internet based social networks. According to Özyer et al (2013) the social media and other Social Network Services (SNS) have transformed how people communicate and interact with each other. At this age, the world has managed to attain a virtual meeting point, where the communities join categories, based on different perspectives. The major ones include language, age, and level of education, region and religion. As more corporation set up different Social Network Services (SNS), they do this with one common goal; to get more people accept their services over the rest in the market. As such, the SNS developers have to develop strategies that will attract more people. It is clear that people would prefer to work with SNSs that meet their current needs and those that have a personalized interaction. According to Romm-Livermore and Setzekorn (2009) one of the main factor that drives people into social network services is the connection the service creates with other people from all over the world. In addition to this, Caviglione et al. (2013) say that people are more attracted to a social network service if it is able to meet their needs and help them solve the needs. With this understanding, the following research work takes a closer look at some of the determinants of user acceptance of a social network services. As stated earlier, there are multiple SNS platforms out therefore but the main difference among them is the number of people who have signed up for the services. This aims to establish the main factors that drive people into particular SNS and not any other. 2.0 Reason of the research The last decade has seen a dramatic take over by the Social Network Services and slowly, the industry has been dominated with more and more platform. However, there is a significance difference in terms of the number of user in each platform. By considering this, there are two categories; one group made up of the highest number and the second group of platforms that are almost unknown and have very few people. Matejic (2015) raises concern on the dominance of Facebook and twitter over the rest of the social media platforms. This raises the question as to what really drives people into these platforms. In addition to this, it is important to analyze the impacts of the Social Network Services to the society in general. In this, both the benefits and the negative impacts should be considered. According to Sénac et al. (2013) there is no doubt the Social Network Services have transformed how human beings interact, created new business opportunities among other benefits. Nonetheless, the same has seen the emergence of other negative issues such as wide-spread of immorality, misuse of freedom of expression, violation of individual privacy, abuse of human rights among others. One might wonder whether these two aspects are the main driving force for people to join a specific Social Network service. 3.0 Objectives The aim of this research is to establish the determinants for user’s acceptance for a social network service. In order to effectively fulfil this aim, the following objectives will have to be accomplished; To determine the factors that drive people to particular Social Network Service over others. To understand how Social Network services meet the needs of their users To understand how developers of social network services target their audience 4.0 Critical literature review Several scholars have carried out research work to determine some of the factors that drive people into using Social Network Services. This research reviews some of the work done in order to establish a connection with the current work. 4.1 Network externalities and motivation theories People can either be influenced by factors that are external to the SNS or factors that are within the network. A research work done by Lin and Lu (2011) tries to explore the two theories to understand why individuals use SNS. The research utilized an online questionnaire to carry out an empirical research. This was used to collect as well as analyze data from 402 samples through structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. Findings of the study show that user enjoyment is one of the most influential factors for peoples continued stay and use of SNS. This is then followed by the number of peers in the SNS, and usefulness. The study also established that the numbers of peers as well as the perceived complementarily do have a stronger influence than even the number of members on perceived benefits. In addition, the study also ran clustering analysis on gender. Here, the study found notable difference in number of peers and also number of members between the males and females. The number of peers is considered to be an important factor affecting the continued intention to use for women but this is not the case with the men. The number of members does not show any significance effect on enjoyment for the males. The findings of the study equally imply that gender difference also create different influences. 4.2 Intentional social action; Social influence and Social presence A research done by Cheung et al. (2011) was aimed at understanding why students use the social media for example Facebook. In this study, the researchers investigated the elements that inspire students to utilize online social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The study particularly conceptualized the use of the social network as a deliberate social activity and accordingly analyzed the effect of social influence, social presence, and the five key values from the uses and gratification model on We-Intention to utilize online interpersonal organizations. An experimental investigation of Facebook users (n = 182) uncovered that We-Intention to utilize online social networks is unequivocally dictated by social presence. Among the five qualities, social related components had the most critical effect on the intention to utilize. 4.3 Social emotional needs interpersonal intimacy Human beings are considered to be social beings. They highly depend on the relationship and interaction with other human beings to effectively function. According to Gough and McGregor (2007) human beings are primarily a product of relationships and connections they make in their society. Human being will strive in order to satisfy their social needs by trying to connect with other people. An article by Rau et al. (2008) explains that people in SNSs have hopes to gratify social-emotional needs and not necessarily informational needs. The people are connected on a person-to-person level which is by far more direct and interpersonal. The article indicates that the factors that influence an individual’s public posting in SNSs are different from those in traditional online platforms and communities. Interpersonal intimacy is connected to influence lurking characters in SNSs. In order to investigate the connection between the posting frequency in SNSs and intimacy level, an online survey was carried out in Wallop, a SNS given out by Microsoft. A total of 102 responses were collected, out of which the first 40 likers as well as the first 40 posting members were identified for the statistical analysis. The result of the analysis shows there is a significant difference between verbal and affective intimacy level between posters and likers. The verbal intimacy level and the affective intimacy level are correlated positively with an individuals posting frequency. The result based on discriminant analysis indicated that verbal and affective intimacies are both useful for discriminating posting/lurking users. In addition, there was found significant differences in gender regarding perceived intimacy as well as posting behaviours. The result means that people lurk in SNSs simple because they believe that their social-emotional needs may not necessarily be satisfied even if they post. 4.4 Individual characteristic and user perception Social Network services are developing as a promising IT-based business, with a few organizations officially being commercialized, for example, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Nonetheless, it is not yet clear which potential users will be key social network service members. In addition, the procedure demonstrating how an individual really chooses to begin utilizing an SNS may be to some degree not quite the same as other web-based social platforms. An article by Kwon and Wen (2010) approaches this issue in two perspectives. The first one is where an empirical examination is made on how individual characteristics affect a users acceptance of social network services. In order to examine these individual characteristics effectively, the research utilizes a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to develop an amended model that is primarily based on three individual differences: altruism, social identity and telepresence. Secondly, the research examines if the users’ perception to view social network service as human relationship-based service or as a task-based service could be a link between perceived constructs and actual use. The study shows that the perceived encouragement as well as perceived orientation is vital constructs that influence actual use of social network services. 5.0. Research Methodology 5.1 Research Philosophy Research philosophy is an over-arching term that is associated to the development of knowledge as well as the nature of that knowledge. The nature of this research calls for the use of interpretivism. This is the most relevant and suitable philosophical approach as the research will be dealing with people’s social actions and activities. According to Molder (2010) interpretivism is well applicable when trying to understand the difference between humans in their role as social actor. This approach is based on understand how human make decisions in social set ups and how the outcomes of these decisions. This approach is also suitable because of the fact that the research will be qualitative nature and its aim to understand why participants behave a particular way and what are the potential differences that cause them to behave in that manner. More precisely, following interpretivism approach will allow assessing and understanding a particular behaviour of particular social actors (SNS users) in a particular context (decision to join a SNS). Thus the interpretations of participants’ actions will be utilized to develop behavioural patterns leading to those actions. 5.2 Research Approach This research will be working with the adaptive approach. This approach is relevant to the study as it involves reasoning and using of facts surrounding a circumstance. This approach helps to answer the questions like why, how and so on. Therefore, the research will be able to answer the questions effectively. The aim of adaptive research is to reach good and accurate decisions to direct all study resources in a more suitable as well as efficient way in order to reduce costs, timelines, as well as better achieve informational objectives. 5.3 Research strategies The research strategy to be utilized in this particular research is constructivism. This is because it supports the current research approach as well as research philosophy. The strategy emphasises that social issues and their meanings are progressively being completed and achieved by social actors. 5.4 Time Horizon Considering that this is an educational set up, the proposed research will therefore be cross-sectional. This is because the maximum time it can take to conduct and complete the research is a period of three months. Cross-sectional research is based on a particular issue within a specific period. 5.5 Data collection method This research survey will use a random sampling method. Random sampling not only ensures the random of samples but also reduces costs. 6.0. Analysis 6.1. Perspective The profound perspective of substantial research includes the positivist and the constructivist perspectives. Here, the researcher opts for constructivist’s perspective, since the aspects under research have broad possibilities, whereby the changes in variables under test may affect the results. Time schedule Description Date Identified the topic 25stMarch, 2015 Submitted proposal 20thApril, 2015 literature review 30thMay,2015 Research design 15th June, 2015 Data collection 1stJuly, 2015 Analysis and interpretation 15thJuly, 2015 Writing up 20thJuly, 2015 Final draft 20thAugust, 2015 Final Deadline 21thSeptember,2015 Reference List Caviglione, L., Coccoli, M., & Merlo, A. (2013). Social network engineering for secure web data and services. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Cheung, C. M., Chiu, P. Y., & Lee, M. K. (2011). Online social networks: why do students use Facebook? Computers in Human Behaviour, 27(4), 1337-1343. Gough, I., & McGregor, J. A. (2007). Wellbeing in developing countries: From theory to research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking, and Services, Sénac, P., Ott, M., & Seneviratne, A. (2012). Mobile and ubiquitous Systems: Computing, networking, and services: 7th International ICST Conference, MobiQuitous 2010, Sydney, Australia, December 6-9, 2010, revised selected papers. Berlin: Springer. Kwon, O., & Wen, Y. (2010). An empirical study of the factors affecting social network service use. Computers in human behaviour, 26(2), 254-263. Lin, K. Y., & Lu, H. P. (2011). Why people use social networking sites: An empirical study integrating network externalities and motivation theory. Computers in Human Behaviour, 27(3), 1152-1161. Matejic, N. (2015). Social media rules of engagement: Why your online narrative is the best weapon during a crisis. Milton, Qld. John Wiley and Sons Australia MöLder, B. (2010). Mind ascribed: an elaboration and defence of interpretivism. Amsterdam, The Netherlands, John Benjamin’s Pub. Co. Bottom of Form Özyer, T. (2013). The influence of technology on social network analysis and mining. Vienna: Springer. Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Rau, P. L. P., Gao, Q., & Ding, Y. (2008). Relationship between the level of intimacy and lurking in online social network services. Computers in Human Behaviour, 24(6), 2757-2770. Romm-Livermore, C., & Setzekorn, K. (2009). Social networking communities and e-dating services: Concepts and implications. Hershey: Information Science Reference. Top of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Read More