Title: An empirical investigation on key determinants of social media trust

Authors: Wendy W.L. Chan; Will W.K. Ma

Addresses: Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Room 301, Leung Kau Kui Building, Shatin, Hong Kong ' Online Communication Research Centre, Department of Journalism and Communication, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 10, Wai Tsui Crescent, North Point, Hong Kong

Abstract: Online communities form naturally as members share interest and knowledge; provide social and emotion support to each other. Trust is needed to online community success where if members do not trust each other, they would not spend time to build relationships. Two key determinants are hypothesised to predict online social media community trust, social ties and perceived privacy. A survey instrument was administered to 278 undergraduate students. The results identified significant relationships between social ties and trust (β = 0.18), perceived privacy and trust (β = 0.31). There was also significant relationship between perceived privacy and social ties (β = 0.28).

Keywords: social media trust; social ties; perceived privacy; online communities; web based communities; virtual communities; learning communities; social media; online learning; e-learning; electronic learning; undergraduate students; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2015.070870

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2015 Vol.18 No.2, pp.151 - 167

Published online: 31 Jul 2015 *

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