Social Media User Satisfaction—Theory Development and Research Findings

Abstract

Online social media, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn continue to influence and penetrate people's lives from multiple dimensions: communal, commercial, political, religious, and so forth. Motivated by developing a good understanding of such social media user behavior and user satisfaction, the current study develops a theoretical model of social media user satisfaction that incorporates constructs such as value to the user, content, critical mass, capability, timeliness, perceived privacy, ease of use, and format of a social media. The current researchers hypothesize eight positive relationships between the theoretical constructs and user satisfaction in the model. Using a sample size of 398 from the users of Facebook, all eight hypotheses proposed in the model were supported by the data. Discussion of research findings, limitations of the current studies, and direction for future studies are also provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Facebook
• social media
• user satisfaction

Notes

Note. Fit indices: χ²(df) = 1,106.525 (584); CMIN/df or χ² /df = 1.90; IFI = 0.94; CFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.048.

Note. CM: critical mass; CN: content; EU: ease of use; TM: timeliness; CP: capability; FM: format; HV: hedonic value; UV: utilitarian value; PP: perceived privacy; US: user satisfaction.