Social media enablers and inhibitors: Understanding their relationships in a social networking site context

This study extends and tests the dual factor model of technology usage (Cenfetelli, 2004; Cenfetelli & Schwarz, 2011), which recognizes enablers and inhibitors as two distinct constructs in the context of social media. We test the effect of two enablers: perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment on perceived communication quality and social media continuance intention. We advance the understanding of the conceptualization of inhibitors from object-based, social-based, behavioral-based, and affective-based perspectives. We investigate the moderating effects of affective-based inhibitors (i.e., perceived social media distress and perceived social media anxiety) and the direct effects of object-based inhibitor (rapid change), social-based inhibitor (i.e., distorted reputation), and behavioral-based inhibitor (perceived complexity) on communication quality and continuance intention. To test the hypotheses, we collected data using an Online Crowdsourcing Markets (OCMs) technique. Using a sample of 268 Facebook users, our findings suggest perceived enjoyment is the main enabler, whereas perceived complexity is the main inhibitor of social media continuance intention. The findings also suggest that perceived social media anxiety moderates the relationships between (1) perceived complexity and perceived enjoyment, (2) perceived complexity and perceived usefulness, and (3) perceived complexity and perceived communication quality. We also find distorted reputation has a positive effect on perceived complexity but rapid change does not have a significant effect on perceived complexity. Perceived communication quality also significantly influences social media continuance intention. Our study confirms the dual factor model of technology usage and advances social media research by demonstrating that inhibitors are distinct from enablers.