The Impact of Social Psychological Factors on the Relationship Quality of Facebook Users

Armed with the great potential for business value and social networking, social media have generated great interests in academia and practice. Rare studies investigated the impact of social psychological factors on the usage of Facebook and the formation of quality relationship. The objective of this paper is to examine the key social psychological factors to better explain the formation of quality relationship. Our proposed theoretical model combined the theories of social influence, social identity, and social presence to capture the essences of the relationship quality between users and Facebook. We conducted a survey to collect data and empirically test our proposed model. Overall, our findings provide theoretical insights to explain the influence of social psychological factors on the usage of Facebook and quality relationship. These findings also help practitioners to plan marketing strategies in better utilize social network sites.