Factors Influencing the Adoption of Social Media in the Perspective of Information Needs

This study focuses on the factors which affect individual users’ adoption of social media in the perspective of their information needs. Social media are the emerging digital communication channels which provide information sharing grounds by helping users distribute and consume information. We introduced both adoption and gratification approaches of IT/IS adoption research by considering individual users and their information needs. For this empirical study, we reviewed previous literatures and their theoretical frameworks in regards to individual users’ adoption of IT/IS. Then, we developed the social media adoption model by including significant constructs including perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, and intention to use from TAM and its extended models. In addition, we also included two more constructs including social influence and personal innovativeness as moderating factors. Finally, we will empirically test our model by using a survey method in order to understand individual users’ adoption of social media.