Social motivation for the use of social technologies

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of the underlying social motivation, including collective norm and subjective norm, which shapes users’ decisions to revisit a social commerce site. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the research model using data from a survey of 531 social commerce users. Findings Results support the importance of subjective and collective norms as measures of social norm. Both norms were combined to: develop a parsimonious higher order measure of social motivation, and examine the consequent impact on social commerce continuance behavior. In addition, the authors demonstrate that the factors that influence the social impact theory variables, specifically time spent during each visit, affective experience and gender can moderate the impact of social norm on social commerce continuance use intention. Practical implications Social commerce website designers can provide visibility of the number of a user’s close contacts (or contacts that the user either interacts with or follows) as well as the total number of people using the same technology as a visual cue to encourage user retention on the site. Social implications The results indicate that customers’ social commerce revisit intentions are strongly influenced by a combination of how they perceive the behavior as endorsed both by their friends and by the majority view in their social network. Originality/value This study examines and validates sources of social influence that affect continuance use intention with social technologies such as social commerce sites.