Social Media Usage Behavior: An Application of a Modified Technology Acceptance Model

Abstract

Spending on social media marketing has become increasingly important in today’s competitive and dynamic business environment. The use of social media (SM) has enhanced brand visibility and facilitated social engagement opportunities for various industries, such as agriculture and education. In the Philippines, however, research on SM usage has been generally descriptive, wherein inter-relationship between determinants of SM use are under-examined. This study recognizes this important gap and applies a modified technology acceptance model (TAM) to investigate the effects of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, subjective norm, and perceived playfulness on users’ intention to use SM. Since these motivation variables are perceived to be endogenous in the literature and are significantly correlated based on initial statistical tests, we used principal component analysis (PCA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to control for endogeneity. Findings from a survey of 500 millennials reveal that all hypothesized determinants have significant influence on intention to use, with perceived ease of use as the strongest factor. These results provide significant insights to social media marketers and developers on how to maximize the potentials of SM as an effective marketing tool. A natural progression of this work is to analyze the usage of SM in agri-based industries. Possible areas of application include the use of SM platforms to establish a community of agri-entrepreneurs and other stakeholders from the agriculture industry, wherein they can share best practices, collaborate with (potential) farmer-entrepreneurs, and interact with diverse consumers.