Document Type

Journal Article

Department/Unit

Department of Finance and Decision Sciences

Title

Perceived critical mass and collective intention in social media-supported small group communication

Language

English

Abstract

The increasing popularity of Web 2.0 has dramatically changed the way in which people communicate with others in their daily life or work. However, the use of social media is fundamentally different from that of traditional information technologies. Specifically, it requires collective efforts and interdependence between two or more people, and thus the usage behavior is no longer an individual's own decision or plan. Built on critical mass theory and social influence processes, this study tries to make an attempt to understand the determinants of collective intention (we-intention), which represents one's perception of a group of people acting as a unit. Instant messaging, one of the most popular social media platforms, has been chosen for investigation, and findings from a survey showed that perceived critical mass influenced we-intention both directly and indirectly through group norm and social identity. Recognizing the importance and relevance of collective intention will advance current understanding beyond individual intention-based models which are widely adopted in prior IS research. This study may be limited by having not included other alternative social technologies, but we leave this work for future research. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Collective intention, Perceived critical mass, Social influence, Social media, We-intention

Publication Date

2013

Source Publication Title

International Journal of Information Management

Volume

33

Issue

5

Start Page

707

End Page

715

Publisher

Elsevier

DOI

10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2013.04.005

Link to Publisher's Edition

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2013.04.005

ISSN (print)

02684012

ISSN (electronic)

01436236

This document is currently not available here.

Link to Publisher's Version

Share

COinS