Understanding the perceived community value of Facebook users

With the growing popularity of social networking services (SNSs) such as Facebook, it has raised important interests about the perceived value implications of such usage. This study examines the usage by combining marketing and IS perspectives through an empirical survey of Facebook users. It was hypothesized that perceived value would be a key multidimensional determinant of behavioral intentions in SNSs. The study holds that the facets of social capital—social interaction ties, trust, and shared vision—and social network information sharing can create a perceived value (i.e., social, experiential, information, and transaction) in SNSs. Analyses conducted on results from a survey of university students (n = 402) suggest that trust, an element of the relational cluster, holds the strongest correlation with the sharing and pooling of resources by users over Facebook. Experiential value is found to be most significant, indicating that the interactions between users on Facebook occur mostly to fulfill a psychological need, such as sharing the useful information and receiving enthusiastic replies or praise. In addition, thanks to the emerging development of F-commerce, transaction value is positively affected.