An Empirical Study on GSN Usage Intention: Factors Influencing the Adoption of Geo-Social Networks

Nowadays, geosocial networks (GSNs) have become a significant component of people's daily lives as they are one of the most popular applications that are being widely accessed through smart devices such as smartphones and tablets. Their rapid widespread use and their invasion of our private life warrant a better understanding. In particular, the impact of trust in GSN, the privacy concerns of users, their perception of risk and the social influence on the use of such mobile applications is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we study the factors influencing the usage intention of GSN users. To realize this, we propose a model based on the user's perspective. Our model focuses on four overall factors that influence the users' concerns and in turn their intention and aim of using GSNs: privacy concerns, trust, social influence and risk perception. We tested empirically the proposed research model by running a web-based survey. The participants consisted of 396 persons with at least a past experience with GSNs. The results revealed that among all the possible factors the privacy concerns, social influence and trust have a significant impact on the intention and usage of GSNs. In contrast, personality traits have almost no effects on trust or social influence. One notable exception is computer self-efficacy that was found to induce a strong influence on the four principal factors.