What Drives Users to Follow Companies Microblogs?:An Elaboration Likelihood Model Perspective

摘要：

　　Along with the prevalence of microbloggihg technology,many companies have been creating microblog accounts to promote their products/brands and communicate with customers.However,it is still unclear regarding what factors are critical and can drive users to follow companies microblogs.To fill this gap,the present research develops a research model through the perspective of elaboration likelihood model.According to the elaboration level of information processing,we explicate users following behavior through three levels of participation:reading messages,forwarding messages,and commenting on messages of companies microblogs.We propose that information quality (the central route variable) and source credibility (the peripheral route variable) are two important antecedents in the research model.In addition,we extend the model by considering the role of similarity and examining its impacts on users following behavior.We empirically test our research model by collecting data from an existing microblogging site in China.The results show that most of the proposed hypotheses are supported.We thereafter discuss these findings,point out limitations and opportunities for future research,and summarize this study with implications for both theory and practice.

关键词： microblogging technology company microblog elaboration likelihood model participation information processing

作者: Kem Z.K.Zhang Sesia J.Zhao Hong Zhang Matthew K.O.Lee

作者单位: School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, China School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, China;Department of Information Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, China

会议类型: 国际会议

会议名称: The Twelfth Wuhan International Conference on E-Business(第十二届武汉电子商务国际会议)

会议地点: 武汉

会议语种:英文

页码: 530-537

在线出版日期: 2013-05-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）