Investigating the influence of age, social capital affinity, and flow on positive outcomes reported by e-commerce site users

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the role of social capital affinity (the sense of community and likeness felt for people online) and the experience of flow (concentrated engagement in/enjoyment of an activity) as antecedents to a variety of positive outcomes associated with the use of e-commerce sites. Also, based on socio-emotional selectivity theory, the current study assessed the influence of age on social capital affinity and flow. As a subset of data from a telephone sample of Internet users in the USA, 282 e-commerce users responded to questions about site satisfaction, perceived focused and incidental knowledge-gains, and affirmation, in addition to flow and social capital affinity. As predicted by socio-emotional selectivity theory, there was a negative relationship between age and social capital affinity and flow. Flow, for its part, mediated the effects of age and social capital affinity on perceived focused and incidental knowledge-gain, satisfaction and affirmation among participants reporting e-commerce use. Finally, the current results indicated that satisfaction and perceived incidental learning predicted participant affirmation for their chosen e-commerce site.

KEYWORDS:

• Flow
• social capital affinity
• satisfaction
• affirmation
• knowledge-gain

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the School of Journalism and Media Studies, San Diego State University, which provided funding for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Comparisons between the initially hypothesised model and the model including the path from focused knowledge-gain and satisfaction indicated that the addition of the path did not substantively influence the direction, significance, or magnitude of the primary parameters of interest. Moreover, this addition did not substantively influence the direction, significance, or magnitude of the indirect paths of interest.