Research of Influencing Factors for Usage of Facebook Willingness -A Case Study on College Students in the Tamsui Area

Abstract

The rise of social networking websites in recent rise has aroused the discussion among the society. Social networking websites not only enable people to connect with friends, but also can conduct various studies. For example, people can create events, conduct a "Human Flesh Search", and so on. Furthermore, people are able to open up new relationships on the internet. This study discusses the influencing factors to the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area. By statistical results, the six variables in this study (relationships, privacy, entertainment, technologies, fans page and community loyalty) were verified as the most important factors affecting the influencing for the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area. It was shown that three variables (relationships, privacy and community loyalty) had a positive influence to the usage of Facebook to college students in the Tamsui area, which completely matched with the discovery discussed in literature. However, the remaining three variables (entertainment, technologies and fans page) showed to greatly differ with literature, which conversely had a negative influence to the usage of Facebook among the subjects in this study; these three variables were therefore studied with in-depth analysis in this research. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

Keywords

Facebook; entertainment; technologies; fans page; Tamsui area; usage willingness

Abstract

The rise of social networking websites in recent rise has aroused the discussion among the society. Social networking websites not only enable people to connect with friends, but also can conduct various studies. For example, people can create events, conduct a "Human Flesh Search", and so on. Furthermore, people are able to open up new relationships on the internet. This study discusses the influencing factors to the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area. By statistical results, the six variables in this study (relationships, privacy, entertainment, technologies, fans page and community loyalty) were verified as the most important factors affecting the influencing for the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area. It was shown that three variables (relationships, privacy and community loyalty) had a positive influence to the usage of Facebook to college students in the Tamsui area, which completely matched with the discovery discussed in literature. However, the remaining three variables (entertainment, technologies and fans page) showed to greatly differ with literature, which conversely had a negative influence to the usage of Facebook among the subjects in this study; these three variables were therefore studied with in-depth analysis in this research.

Purpose of Research and Motives

Background of research and motive

With the advance of technology, we are currently in a new era where computers and mobile phones are readily accessed to the internet. Social networking websites are shown to further stand out on the internet, which as Facebook ranked second in the number of registered users among the world, reaching more than 600 million. One of the reasons for the incredible and rapid growth is because it is simple to register and easy to use. The huge influence is as described in the media, where "it's population size would make it the third largest country, after China and India". The founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has even been named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2010; the film The Social Network was also made which portrays the phenomenon, making Facebook sweeping the whole globe. Facebook's capability to bring up major topics enhanced its commercial value, making itself unaffected by the times of economic downturns.

The internet has shortened the distances among people. Social networking websites increase the interactions of people and maintains the relationships in society. New friends are also made via social networking websites. Facebook is based on interpersonal interactions, which the games, fan groups, blogs and sharing of photos enable users to know others even better. Users use this function to connect social development and maintain the relationship with others (Ellison et al, 2007). Facebook has successfully captured the hearts of users and is currently the most popular social networking website.

Purpose of Research

This study uses the influencing factors to the usage of Facebook willingness to analyze the factors of Facebook usage among college students to understand the features of social networking websites and the reasons which may affect users. The subjects chosen for this research were college students within the Tamsui area. The main purposes of this study are described as follow:

a. To explore and discuss the characteristics of the social networking website, Facebook.

b. To find the possible factors which perhaps may affect the willingness of using Facebook.

This study verifies if these factors shall affect and increase the willingness among college students in the Tamsui area of using Facebook; it also serves as reference to the operators of social networking websites.

Literature Review

The Effect of Relationships to usage of Facebook Willingness

The most direct influence to interactions is how people get along with others. In past social sciences research, analysis showed that the relations between friends shall mutually affect their behavior and thinking, resulting into many similarities (Granovetter, 1973; Kandel, 1978; vanDuijn et al, 2003). Facebook uses this mutually influence pattern and focuses on target groups. Facebook announced it now has over 300 million users worldwide. The number of people who signed up for Facebook in Taiwan has already exceeded 2.23 million just within the past several years (updated to September 7, 2009), and continuously growing by an average of 200,000~300,000 persons per week (Huang et al., 2009). The data published by Insight Xplorer showed that Facebook has successfully surpassed Taiwan's originally largest social networking website, "Wretch", just within a short period of four months and become the second largest website in Taiwan since June 2009 (Google ranks first). Many users indicated that Facebook helped them reconnect with past friends. The application programs used in Facebook are not innovative technologies but rather emphasizes on the concepts of "simple to use", "connecting" and "share"; the games and updates enable people to interact with friends, which increase discussion topics and bring people closer (Shih, 2010). The relations are not only established among the virtual world of the internet, but also are combined to realistic life. Besides being an online interactive website, Facebook also becomes a media for relationships when offline.

Effect on Privacy

Facebook extremely holds the personal information of its users with great importance. Through platforms, users can authorize their information and be sent to various application programs. Facebook designed a series of privacy control options, allowing users to set who can the messages they posted. People do not have to worry messages are revealed. This suitable level of information disclosure enables easy interaction.

Based on the above literature, this study considers that privacy can evaluate the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area.

Entertainment

The powerful links and interactive functions of Facebook aroused a popularity wave in Taiwan during the summer of 2009. The number of registered users greatly increased. This was because the games are entertaining; making people who already know each other can have even more interaction. The Facebook games naturally become the motive of many people becoming users. As it is able to connect friends and leave messages, friends invited other friends and eventually led to signing up.

The motive to sign up because of games was evident in Taiwan, which the number of users in Taiwan grew from several hundred thousands to more than 5 million in five months, from July to November, 2009. The start of this was quite interesting, however. Among the thousands of applications, "Happy Farm" was extremely popular. As internet friends awaits the fun in "planting crops" and "stealing crops", the interaction among friends increased further. Friends invite unsigned friends to play, which naturally increased the number of users and formed a madness of becoming "farmers and planting crops". Furthermore, the game was designed where the number of friends shall directly affect the score and rewards. This had therefore encouraged users to increase friends, to add strangers, and friends of friends. As a result, the friend list not only included a list of original friends, but also included people one done not know offline.

Therefore from the above literature, this study considers that entertainment can evaluate the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area.

Technical Information and New Products Development

With the internet network and information, the advances in media technology and popularity, and the continuous improvement of online/offline network access technology, the goal is to achieve instant messaging. The priorities include: mobile wireless access technology and wired broadband access technology.

Safko & Brake (2009) suggested social networking websites, such as Facebook, have seem to possess media characteristics, and can therefore be called as group media; though multimedia, users interact with others by conservation. The content produced from social networking websites is the exchange of news or information. Users can not only control the information content but also can determine the flow and influence of the information. Shih (2009) further indicated that technological innovation has promoted the internet from the function of websites to users lead interpersonal network contact. The use of social networking websites becomes organizing, filtering, contacting and integrating the online social graph. Therefore, group media relates to how users capture and use information to display oneself and social recognition, rather than receiving and using innovative technology; the effect of group media to users is of privacy and personal rather than the capture of information or the capabilities in technology. Shih considered that group media converted the power and control pattern of technology; group media not only enhanced the energy among the voices of users, it also given users to practice and create a self-identified control (Shih 2009).

For the aspect in new products development, in May, 2007, Facebook announced the plan to lets users post free classified ads, known as "Facebook Marketing". Holzner (2009) considered that Facebook provided an even better marketing environment, also indicating that compared to the relatively chaotic and non-order environment as in "MySpace", Facebook provide users to make friend and group network contact. Users not only can maintain contact with friends, observe their friends' events, it becomes a series connection among the society to form cohesiveness in groups. According to the 2011 bulletin by Visa, the survey results among e-commerce consumers in 2010 showed that six items show rapid growth in the electronic commerce market which consumers enthusiastically purchase online, where among these 6 markets about 87% of the respondents mentioned they purchased products and services online in the past year; with an annual network consumption of USD 2,086 in average.

According to the ComScore report by ARROO in regards to Facebook in the Asia Pacific, the total time on Facebook by users in this September was 22 billion and 577 million minutes, or about 376.28 million hours. Although the total time used in countries all reflect a growing trend, the growth status is not necessarily the same. Taiwan had the highest growth percentage rate reaching to 986.81%, whereas Indonesia was the lowest and only had 21.18% growth.

Fans Page

Holzner (2009) proposed the attitude and view of exchange platforms, and found out that 40% of the consumers agreed to the description that "Facebook is an excellent channel to obtain related information of a company and its products".

According to a Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency, in January 2010, in a study of 100 brands, 59 had Facebook pages. According to Facebook, it hosts about 1.6 million active pages today operated by more than 700 thousands of companies and groups. These fans pages regularly update new information to fans so that no boundaries (zero distance) are between the fans and the company or group.

The percentage of Taiwanese internet users interacting with their favorite brands via Facebook fan pages reached to 33.3% high. In addition, they like to join fan pages which provide information for their daily lives. The primary reasons of joining fan pages were because of the "search", "connect", "and "cohesive" abilities, which users generally agree to be the most attractive things. Surveys indicated that people will go online to search information before purchasing, especially for travel, hardware information, buying clothes or for other consuming actions; further on, half of them shall go online and share information of the brand after purchasing (Shih, 2010).

According to the well-known internet marketing and trend knowledge expert, Sun Chuan-hsiung, in 2009, the creation of fan pages on one hand attracts the attention of general internet users, while on the other hand use the group concept as basis to expand business. Brand operators can increase the interaction with people on the internet, and also enhance the scale of the brand and product in the internet to the group. Sun considers fans pages have the following properties:

1. Taiwan currently has more than 6.5 million members. The additional support by games and unique qualities, fan pages increase the time users stay online time and access frequency each day. This increases the usage and dependency for Facebook.

2. Facebook requires using use a real name to login. Therefore individuals hold the responsibility when posting messages which reduce the possibility of malicious messages and attacks by users.

3. Complete group function. Operating the interface is based on a group concept as the start point. As different groups have their own requirements, fan pages are managed and developed according to a group's characteristics.

4. The function of Facebook's wall has eventually become well-developed and convenient, which today also includes a micro-blog function, discussion threads, friend or fan posting function, and instant messaging response. This also showed to benefit businesses for operating and managing groups.

5. When fans pages are business-oriented, it shall greatly benefit the internet for integrating and marketing. The support for Facebook developing application programming interface (API) enables businesses to develop many customized marketing programs and events according to their own needs, or write helpful and unique applications and games for the marketing events. When group members participate in the brand events, increase interaction, and have a common marketing goal, the implementation of different marketing plans can be planned according to different groups.

6. The fans window can display a company's website or blog. When users browse the page or blog, they can add it as a fans page through the window, making it easy to expand potential groups.

7. While integrating Facebook Connect with the websites of businesses, users can user their Facebook account to login to the website members system. This can increases the possibility of users using the resources of a business website.

From above, fans page have many positive effects to business operators. Fans page shall be comprehensively developed with even more mature and multi-directional applications technology.

Therefore, this study considers that fans page can evaluate the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area.

Community Loyalty

In the traditional consumer behavioral theory, Wu (2006) described that "brand loyalty" refers to the degree of awareness and preference to the brand, which a consumer consistently purchases the same brand or service. Day (1969) suggested that customer loyalty is the continuous behavior of the customer purchasing a certain product. Furthermore, Jones and Sasse proposed that the loyalty from the user is reflected by behavior in three patterns. The first one is repurchasing willingness, which refers to the degree of consumers willing to repurchase a product or service. The willingness of purchasing becomes a strong indicator for future behavior. The second is initial behavior, indicating that repurchasing behavior has been actually conducted. The last one is secondary behavior, which refers to the behavior where consumers actively recommend toward friends or family (Shih, 2008).

Summary

By summarizing the above literature, the study variables in this research are listed as follow:

Method of Research

Research Procedure

The research procedures in this study are mainly divided into nine steps, as shown in Figure3-1. The first step was to determine the research direction from an interested theme, which was then inspired by research background and motivation to collect data and discussion of associated literature. The discussion of literature then determined the purpose of research, which then became the basis to create a research framework, establish the research hypothesis and methods for data analysis. The follow-up steps then included questionnaire design, distribute and collect the questionnaires. After the questionnaires were returned, data compilation and analysis were conducted. The results from the analysis were discussed with an overall relation view, and finally conclusions and suggestions were given according to our analysis and discussed results.

Research Design

Research Subjects and Sample Size

This study used college students in the Tamsui area as research subjects. Four colleges are located within the area, which are St. John's University, Tamkang University, Aletheia University, Taipei College of Marine Technology and Commerce (TCMT), respectively. The sample distribution in this was according to the percentage of students among the four schools. The subjects were not specifically selected by their major, class year and gender. The expected return of valid questionnaires was 200.

Sampling

This study used convenience sampling to distribute the questionnaires. The respondents by random choice were asked to fill the questionnaire. The questionnaires were distributed at the main gate and side gate of the four schools. This was because they are the locations were students must walk by when they attend or leave classes. It is also considered to be crowded locations. The questionnaires were distributed randomly.

Data Analysis

After conducting the research, all returned data were carefully examined to remove any invalid questionnaire information. The data were then coded and input into a computer. The statistical processing and analysis was performed by SPSS15.0 for Windows. The method of data analysis was divided into two parts: The first part was reliability analysis. In order to confirm the accuracy of our research results, reliability analysis was performed to the questionnaire scale using Cronbach's α to check if the participants and questionnaire content show consistency. The second part was multiple regression analysis, used to explain the influential degrees of the 6 independent variables toward the dependent variable.

Questionnaire Content

The study first referred to associated research from literature as basis to develop the research framework and design the questionnaire. The questionnaire is divided into four categories, including the usage status of Facebook, survey of willingness in using Facebook, the influencing factors to the usage if Facebook willingness, and personal basic information

Results

Questionnaire Results

The questionnaires in this study were distributed by four waves, having a total return of 205 answered copies. Every time when returned the questionnaires were first checked of validness before coded. A total of 12 invalid questionnaires were removed, and the total return of valid questionnaires was 193. The following sections shall describe the various statistical analysis used in this study.

Reliability Analysis

This study used Cronbach's α value as the standard for measuring the reliability of the questionnaires. The results are given in Tables 4-1 and 4-2. The reliability coefficient, α value, for all of the questions (44 total) in the questionnaire was 0.746. This indicates that the results have middle consistency.

Multiple regression analysis

This study used multiple regression to analyze the influence of the 6 independent variables (relationships, privacy, entertainment, technologies, fans page and community loyalty) toward the dependent variable (usage of Facebook willingness). The purpose was to verify the research hypothesis below:

Hp: "The six variables (relationships, privacy, entertainment, technologies, fans page and community loyalty) are the most important factors for affecting the willingness of Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area"

Results from multiple regression analysis show (Tables 4-3~4-5) that the model was suitable (F value = 4.939, p value =.000), where the adjusted R square (R2) value was 0.119. This indicated that R2 in the model was 11.9%. As for the variables validness from the perspective of the t value, three out of the six independent variables reached significance, which were relationships, privacy and community loyalty; the remaining three failed to reach significance. As for the influential degree of the variables, from the beta value it was shown that the greatest factor to affect the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area was "community loyalty" (Beta=0.204). The multiple regression equation for the model is:

Y (usage of Facebook willingness) = 0.168X (relationships) + 0.209X (privacy) - 0.029X (entertainment) - 0.085X (technologies) - 0.1X (fans page) + 0.204X (community loyalty) + ei.

Results and Suggestions

The statistical results in Chapter 4 verified the 6 variables in this study (relationships, privacy, entertainment, technologies, fans page and community loyalty) were the most important factors for affecting the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area. Among them, 3 variables (relationships, privacy and community loyalty) had a positive effect to the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area, which completely corresponds to the findings in the literature. However, the other three variables (entertainment, technologies and fans page) on the other hand differed from the literature, and conversely showed to have a negative effect. As a result, these three variables were given an in-depth analysis in this study.

Entertainment

According to the discussion in literature, there are many reasons why Facebook is very popular in Taiwan. One of the reasons is that Facebook has many fun games. In 2009, the rise of the extremely popular "Happy Farm" game in Taiwan led to users increasing their relationships while planting and stealing crops. These games are usually designed where the number of friends shall directly affect the score and rewards. This encourages players who wanted to get high scores to continuously invite friends regardless he/she is a friend of friends or even a stranger. Therefore the assumption in this study is quite reasonable, which the entertainment games provide shall increase the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area. However, according to our statistical results, it was found that "entertainment" shall conversely have a negative effect to the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area.

Although Facebook games are appealing, it can also cause worries to users in regards of privacy. According to research, even though Facebook users had the highest privacy setting, they are considered as invisible once game applications were installed. Not only were all information recorded in the personal account were collected, including friends list, date of birth and so on, but also friends were affected and may even danger the security of the individual's internet banking account. A true case has proved that Facebook games applications will seriously invade users' privacy. One example is the once-popular City Ville. The total players worldwide exceeded 95 million persons, which in average 1 out of every 7 users played the game. In 2010 news spread that the company of the game, Zynga, collected the personal information of the players and transferred to a third party. Based on these findings, this study reasonably surmised that Facebook entertainment and privacy are fundamentally in conflict. Based on worries in privacy, college students in the Tamsui area shall conversely not increase their willingness of using Facebook because of the numerous fun games. This assumption supports with the statistical results in this study.

Technologies

Meanwhile, results from this study also showed that the "technologies" used by Facebook will also reduce the willingness of using Facebook among college students in the Tamsui area. This result differs from discussions in the literature. In September 2011, Facebook's update of page display was expected to receive praise by users but rather received numerous negative criticisms. Some users even thought that the new display was overcrowded and too complicated. What was worse was that an analyst indicated that the new version design enabled Facebook to collect even more information or likes of users, making it easier to perform one-to-one marketing. This discovery was similar to the "entertainment" variable, which would conversely reduce the usage of Facebook willingness among college students in the Tamsui area. The reason was same - privacy protection. Whether Facebook claimed that the new version or new function is to bring more convenience to users, it cannot be denied that the latest technologies represent that Facebook will have more opportunities to collect personal information from users.

This was the very important discovery in our research: "entertainment", "technologies" and "privacy" are in conflict. In accordance to this research, based on college students in the Tamsui area, users shall place "privacy" as the first priority when evaluating these factors.

Fans page

According to the discussion in literature, the fans page function in Facebook is an effective channel to communicate with online users. Facebook users are able to obtain brand messages by fans page, which are more accurate than the information from Google or other search engines. In specific, Facebook fans page also enables users to have high interaction with their favored brands. Therefore this study reasonably predicts that fans page shall increase the usage of Facebook to college students in the Tamsui area.

However, our statistical results indicated that the effect of fans page to the usage of Facebook by college students in the Tamsui region was negative. The reason may likely be that among the numerous fans pages, most are created by business groups, which the messages are mainly of:

1. Latest updates of the company

2. Product promotion messages

3. Public service/charity activities

Therefore based on our statistical results, this study reasonably surmised that when users found out that businesses spread company-related messages or promoting events though fans page to achieve commercial interest, the willingness of receiving messages shall decrease. On the contrary, when fans page post news less related to the company but rather issue information related to our lives, new fashion or interesting articles, users have a higher acceptance as there are no sense of advertising.

References

References

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Holzner, Steven (2009), Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business. Indianapolis, IN: Que Publishing.

Kandel, D. B. (1978). Homophily, Selection, and Socialization in Adolescent Friendships. The American Journal of Sociology, 84(2), 427-436.

Van Duijn, M. A. J., Zeggelink, E. P. H., Huisman, M., Stokman, F. N., & Wasseur, F. W. (2003). Evolution of sociology freshmen into a friendship network. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 27(2), 153 - 191.

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