Flourishing Independents or Languishing Interdependents: Two Paths from Self-Construal to Identification with Social Media

Effects of Restaurant Satisfaction and Knowledge Sharing Motivation on eWOM Intentions

“…Previous research has classified web users based on the experience and suggested a novice user is one with experience of less than 6 months (Bernard, 2001; Novak, Hoffman, & Yung, 2000; Ward & Lee, 2000). A number of studies also adopted this criterion to exclude novice users when determining the sample frame (Hewitt & Forte, 2006; Hoffman & Novak, 2012; San Martín & Herrero, 2012). In this study, given that the survey predicted eWOM sharing intentions, a participant had to be a user of OpenRice.com with at least 6 months of posting experience.…”

Social Value and Content Value in Social Media: Two Ways to Flow

“…And we classify customer value in social media into social value and content value due to the characteristics of social media [4] In the contexts of social media, consumers with interdependent self-construal are likely to value connectedness and group harmony [23] to enhance their social value because they predominantly view themselves as part of a larger group. Hoffman, Novak, and Randy Stein [28] verified that consumers with interdependent self-construal tend to achieve their connection goals in the social media contexts.…”

“…Lee, Kim and Kim's research found in the social media contexts that consumers' relational view became salient when the consumers' self-construal was primed to be interdependent rather than independent, and that such interdependent self-construal positively influenced consumers' eWOM behavioral intentions through their community engagement self-efficacy and their social outcome expectations [22]. In social media settings, Hoffman, Novak, and Randy Stein [28] verified that people with an interdependent self-construal achieve group identification to connect with others, while people with an independent self-construal achieve group identification to interact with interest-relevant content. The purpose of our research is to study the impacts of self-construal on flow experience through the mediation roles of customer value.…”

“…Whereas consumers with independent self-construal devote themselves into contributing, creating, consuming and exchanging their generated contents [4][5] [6][8] to increase their content value because they primarily view themselves as an independent individual entity, as distinct from the group [22] [24]. Hoffman, Novak, and Randy Stein [28] verified that individuals with independent selfconstrual tend to achieve their content goals in the social media contexts. Hence, in the contexts of social media, we can propose the following hypotheses: H1a: Consumers' interdependent self-construal positively influences their social value.…”

“…They were translated into Chinese and then back-translated into English by two bilingual persons to assure comparability. Specifically, the scales of interdependent self-construal and independent self-construal were derived from the research by Singelis [25] and consisted of five and four items respectively; the scales of social value and content value were compiled on the basis of the research by Hoffman, Novak, and Randy Stein [28] and were composed of four and five items separately; and an fouritem scale hat measured flow experience was developed according to the study by Lee and Tsai [34].…”