Title: Social network services and their effects on network social capital: an instrumental variables approach

Authors: Sehee Han; Kyung-Gook Park

Addresses: Institute of Social Sciences, Kookmin University, 77 Jeongneung-Ro, Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, South Korea ' HS Ad, LG Mapo Bldg., 155 Mapo-daero, Mapo-gu, Seoul, 121-721, South Korea

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the association between social network services and network social capital while adopting an instrumental variables approach. This study includes a simple random sample of 491 respondents gathered through a cross-sectional survey in South Korea. The results show that users of social network services were higher in their network social capital in comparison with non-users of social network services. The results further suggest that it is high intensity users rather than low intensity users who are higher in network social capital than non-users of social network services. The current study contributes to the literature as it empirically investigates the association between social network services and network social capital, while including non-users of social network and tackling the possible endogeneity problem of the usage of social network services.

Keywords: network social capital; social network services; SNSs; treatment effects model; instrumental variable approach; technology acceptance model; TAM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2020.108304

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2020 Vol.18 No.4, pp.386 - 404

Accepted: 14 Jan 2019
Published online: 08 Jul 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article