How Do Passive Social Networking Services Use and Its Antecedents Affect Users’ Continuance Intention? An Empirical Study of WeChat Use

PURPOSE: Although social networking services (SNSs) have attracted billions of people to maintain and extend their social relationships online, more and more passive usage behaviors have been found during the daily SNS usage. The aim of this paper is to investigate how SNS users’ continuance intention is affected by passive SNS use, subjective well-being, as well as perceived concern regarding privacy and impression management. METHODS: A research model was developed according to the proposed hypotheses, and then partial least square (PLS) SEM was adopted to empirically assess the valid data collected from 389 WeChat users. RESULTS: The findings show that passive SNS use cannot significantly undermine continuance intention, but it has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between subjective well-being and continuance intention. Besides, the results of empirical research also reveal the antecedents of passive SNS use and subjective well-being from the perspectives of privacy concern and impression management concern, and thereby present the mechanism underlying users’ continuance intention. CONCLUSION: This study enriches the SNS literature by indicating the moderating role of passive SNS use in the process of SNS usage, which facilitates the understanding regarding how users’ continuance intention can be influenced when they use SNSs passively. This study can help SNS providers to better understand the factors affecting users’ continuance intention in the case of passive SNS use, and then formulating effective strategies for retaining users and avoiding passive usage behaviors.