A Multi-Dimensional Approach for Understanding Perceived Usefulness in Social Networking Service Context

With the proliferation of social networking service (SNS), people can experience variety of services such as making posts, viewing others’ posts, sharing interesting contents, replying to others, and playing web games. Taking into account the characteristics of SNS and the roles of its users, we can consider SNS platforms as multi-purpose artifacts. Reflecting this property, this study proposes a multi-dimensional approach for perceived usefulness constructs. Following the previous study on uses and gratification theory, perceived usefulness for utilitarian purposes (i.e., coordination and immediate access) and perceived usefulness for hedonic purposes (i.e., affection and leisure) were examined simultaneously. With an empirical analysis using 259 samples, it was confirmed that the constructs of perceived usefulness can be discriminated into four different dimensions according to those specified purposes. The result of multiple regression analysis showed the differences in the impact of each dimension of perceived usefulness on continuance intention. The results of this exploratory study can be useful for future research on the technology adoption and usability test within SNS context.