Understanding Social Network sites continuance Intention from a Self-Disclosure and Social Capital Perspective

This study intends to understand why the social network sites users continue to use the service and why would they turn to other social network services. By integrating the honesty of self-disclosure with confirmation and three dimensions of social capital with perceived usefulness, we establish a new expectation confirmation model to understand the continuance intention of social network sites users. We propose eleven hypotheses and test them through a survey conduct in China and received 159 valid questionnaires. Through the analysis of 139 valid questionnaires which have at least one social network sites account, we draw some interesting conclusions. Honesty confirmation of self-disclosure has a positive relationship with the three dimension of perceived social capital but not the users’ satisfaction. Perceived social network is a significant antecedent of users’ satisfaction and continuance intention on account of the high switching cost. Meanwhile, perceived shared language can increase users’ satisfaction but not the continuance intention because its universality, and perceived trust has no relationship with both. This research provides a new perspective of expectation confirmation model to understand the social network sites continuance. It also gives some advises about how could social network provider increase their users’ continuance intention.