Belief in dangerous virtual communities as a predictor of continuance intention mediated by general and online social anxiety: The Facebook perspective

Facebook was applied to investigate correlation between psychological symptoms.Belief in dangerous virtual community is correlated to social anxiety.Increase in social anxiety increases the continuance intention.Increase in general social anxiety increases the online social anxiety. Despite increased understanding regarding the effects of individual and contextual factors on continuance intention, this study investigated individuals' beliefs in dangerous virtual communities as a predictor of the related psychological symptoms, general and online social anxiety, in relation to individuals' continuance intention to sustain participation in the social network of Facebook. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to 230 effective questionnaires and the results revealed that belief in dangerous virtual communities was positively correlated to both general and online social anxiety, which results in a negative correlation with continuance intention. The implication was that if participants experienced high levels of both types of social anxieties, then they exhibited a low level of continuance intention. In conjunction with a number of studies, the findings suggested that belief in a dangerous virtual community serves as the antecedent of general and online social anxiety. In addition, recommendations for future research are provided by the study.

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