User's Social Network Site Loyalty

Introduction

Users are the most valuable resources to a social network site (SNS) (Han, 2016; Ku et al., 2013; Lin et al. 2014; Zhou et al., 2010). However, it seems that many SNS managers do not to fully understand how to keep their users in a long run. Therefore, several once-popular SNS have faded away from the online networking scene because of severe user loss. For instance, Friendster was a popular SNS in the late 1990s (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). It had over 115 million registered users, but only 4 million accounts are still active (MOL, 2012). The Web site has shrunken from a global SNS leader to a regional online gaming site (MOL, 2012). Myspace was the most visited SNS in the U.S. in the early 2000s (Thelwall, 2008). However, the number of active Myspace users plummeted from 180 million in 2008 to only 60 million in 2013 (Boffard, 2014). The Web site has changed from a mainstream SNS to an online music discovery site (Myspace, 2016). These real-world examples do not only indicate the importance of SNS users, but also show an urgent need for the knowledge of building an SNS user’s loyalty. We design the current research to have a further understanding of the user’s SNS loyalty factor. This study is organized in the following manner: First, we introduce the concept of a user’s SNS loyalty, and then review the extant literature of the two theoretical foundations of this study, including the information systems continuance model and the taste performance theory. Second, we introduce our new research model and hypotheses. Third, we present the methodology used for data collection. Data analyses, research findings, contributions and implications will be presented in the last three sections of this paper.