Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850

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Information & Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/im

How attachment influences users’ willingness to donate to content

creators in social media: A socio-technical systems perspective
Jinlin Wana , Yaobin Lub,* , Bin Wangc, Ling Zhaob
a
School of Information, Central University of Finance and Economics, China
b
School of Management Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
c
College of Business and Entrepreneurship, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Received 27 January 2016 As a relatively new behavior, donation to content creators in social media has become very popular in the
Received in revised form 12 November 2016 last few years. Different from traditional donation to nonprofit organization or victims, donation to
Accepted 18 December 2016 content creators in social media has received little attention from academic researchers. On the basis of
Available online 21 December 2016 the socio-technical systems framework and attachment theory, this study develops a model to
investigate the effects of social and technological factors on users’ donation behavior. Our results indicate
Keywords: that donation intention is determined by the emotional attachment to the content creator and functional
Donation behavior dependence on social media, which are influenced by both social factors (identification, interaction, and
Social media
information value) and technical factors (sociability and personalization).
Attachment theory
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Socio-technical systems

1. Introduction content creators. In addition, content creators also share the

Social media encompass a wide range of websites such as social
networking sites, blogs, microblogs, and websites such as YouTube
and Flickr that support content sharing [88]. Social media play a
vital role in the creation and sharing of information through user-
generated content (UGC) within online social networks [130]. In
recent years, social media have become increasingly popular and
attracted not only businesses’ participation and contribution but
also researchers to investigate the motivation behind their use
[114].
To be an attractive platform to users, especially content
creators, social media provide various functions such as allowing
users to create their own channels, post contents that can be
instantaneously shared with a wide audience, choose to be friends
with others or subscribe to other channels, and comment on or
choose favorite contents [37]. Because encouraging UGC and
opinion formation are the core goals, some social media sites in
China provide a new function—donation—that allows users or the
audience to donate to content creators. Users donate on the basis of
the knowledge and service provided by content creators, and
content creators can gain monetary or nonmonetary rewards as a
result. Therefore, such a function provides an incentive for the
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jennywan@126.com (J. Wan), luyb@mail.hust.edu.cn (Y. Lu),
bin.wang@utrgv.edu (B. Wang), lingzhao@mail.hust.edu.cn (L. Zhao).
revenue generated from users’ donation with the platform, which
can support social media in ensuring their innovativeness and
long-term survival [81].
The donation function as a business strategy has become quite
popular, particularly in China. For example, Sina Weibo, the most
well-known microblogging platform in China, has provided the
donation function since 2014, and the revenues through donation
reached more than 40 million yuan in 2015. YY platform, a user-
generated live video streaming site similar to Twitch.tv, obtained
676.2 million yuan in revenue from donation in the fourth quarter
of 2014 and attracted more than 200,000 content creators in its
music channel [90,148]. In 2015, WeChat Public Accounts also
tested the feasibility of the donation function by allowing personal
public accounts to add the donation button at the end of the
contents they propagated. However, social media are usually free
of charge, and most users do not need to pay to view contents [86].
Therefore, an understanding of users’ motivation behind donation
in social media is important for researchers and social media
developers to help businesses to unleash their potential. Although
donation to social media content creators is not prevalent in the
Western culture, its success in China makes it an attractive feature
to consider for social media providers there. Our research provides
social media providers around the world with important practical
implications on how to understand and motivate users’ donation
behavior.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2016.12.007
0378-7206/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
838 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
Given that donation is a relatively new function in social media
and no research has investigated this phenomenon yet, our study
first compares it to donation to street performance or busking, and
then we focus on the charitable and consumptive attributes of this
behavior. This study draws upon the socio-technical systems
framework to examine the influence of social and technological
characteristics on users’ affection toward and intention to donate
to content creators in social media. As social media is a socio-
technical information platform [140], the socio-technical systems
framework allows us to capture both the social and technical
aspects of social media in our understanding of donation behaviors
there. In addition, we investigate users’ motivation by applying the
attachment theory, a theoretical framework that has been used to
study the relationship between attachment and donation.
Attachment theory helps us to empirically test the distinction
between emotional attachment and functional dependence
considering that such attachments are induced by different
aspects of users’ affection. In addition, we examine the effects of
emotional attachment to the content creator and functional
dependence on social media on donation intention. Moreover,
the combination of the socio-technical systems framework and
attachment theory can provide us a better understanding of which
type of social and technical factors influence attachment to predict
social media donation behavior.
The present research makes the following contributions. First,
this study extends the literature on donation behavior to social
media, whereas previous research mainly focuses on charitable
organizations and victims. Specifically, we examine the Pay-What-
You-Want (PWYW) donation model in social media, where the
original motivation of the knowledge contributor or content
creator is not financial gains. Second, we extend the understanding
of the motivation of users’ donation intention using attachment
theory and examine the crucial roles of social and technical aspects
as antecedents of attachment on the basis of socio-technical
systems.
This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, the
theoretical background of the research is presented. In the third
section, we discuss the research model and hypothesis, followed by
the research methodology including measurement development,
data collection, and analysis in the fourth section. In the final
section, discussion of the results, the theoretical and practical
implications, limitations, and future research are presented.
2. Literature review
In this section, we review the theoretical underpinnings of our
research by first providing an overview of donation in social media
and its two attributes. Then we introduce the attachment theory
and the socio-technical systems framework.
2.1. Donation in social media
Researchers in various social science disciplines including
psychology [77,146], economics [28,60], marketing [94,98], and
nonprofit organization domain [19,116] have examined the
donation behavior. In these literatures, donation is defined as
charitable giving behavior to organizations or others beyond one’s
own family. Donation may be both monetary and nonmonetary
such as donating organs, blood, clothes, and toys [15,19,53,56]. In
social media, the donation function is used by social media
platforms as an incentive to improve the richness and quality of
UGC [35].
Donation in social media is similar to busking or street
performance because a performer or content creator first delivers
service or knowledge, and then the audience gives a voluntary
amount [84]. As a joint product, basking includes both music and
charity, whereas charity is exhibited by the audience only and is
considered as the price paid for the music. Therefore, performers
even though freeriding behavior exists (e.g. [84]). “Busking” in
social media also involves a joint product: charity and the service
or knowledge provided by the content creator. Thus, we argue that
donation in social media has two inherent attributes: the
charitable attribute and the consumptive attribute.
The consumptive attribute of donation implies that the donors
pay for the consumption of goods or service, such as contents or
service provided by the creators. From this perspective, the
performers have to make sure their performance appeals to the
prospective audience, visitors, or buyers. Some researchers have
investigated how intercultural and intracultural identities exhib-
ited by street performers increase the attention of the audience
(e.g. [25]). The audience can set the price for the street
performance and use the PWYW pricing scheme. However, as
street performance lacks the mechanisms to ensure payments or
donations and are vulnerable to freeriding, some researchers
noticed that charitable causes may also be the major motivations
for the audience’s donation behavior [65]. Kushner and Brooks [84]
modeled the audience’s payment intention and found both musical
service and reputation influence the decision to pay. Similar to the
donation behavior examined in the busking context, donation in
social media also presents freeriding opportunities and employs
the PWYW pricing scheme. However, the lack of social pressure in
such a virtual context might further decrease users’ donation
intention. Considering more and more social media platforms have
started to support the donation function as a revenue source, it is
important to understand what motivates users’ willingness to
donate to content creators.
2.1.1. Charitable attribute of donation in social media
Charitable- or gift-giving behaviors as a type of donation
behavior have been studied in various social science disciplines
including psychology, economics, and anthropology, and in
marketing and the nonprofit organization domain
[15,19,81,95,116]. Researchers view the act of gift giving as
symbolic or even a “labor of love” for some. When individuals
make a payment or donation, they usually do not receive direct
commensurate tangible benefits [118].
Research on donation has studied why people give or donate by
applying the motivation theory. Such research has classified
motivation to donate into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivations to donate can be closely associated with the
“warm effect,” the positive emotions associated with doing good
and helping others, which is also called altruism or benefit to
others [5,6,146]. Many individuals donate to nonprofit organiza-
tions out of a desire to help these organizations to achieve their
mission or to support a particular cause. That is, they enjoy the
satisfaction from the experiences of making the donation [69,127].
Sargeant et al. [116] concluded that empathy, sympathy, and
emotions such as guilt, pity, and fear can considerably affect
individuals’ intrinsic motivation. In contrast, extrinsic motivations
are the means through which individuals can gain rewards or
benefits from engaging in a behavior. These benefits can be
tangible such as tax breaks [124] and monetary rewards [54] or
intangible such as praise, recognition, or grades [59,79]. For
example, an individual who donates to an arts organization may
gain a better seat at an event, and the “purchase” of a brick in a
community garden can have one’s name displayed as a donor.
Extrinsic motivations promote donation because individuals will
consider them before donating [118].
In addition to motivation theory, research suggests relation-
ships between donors and nonprofit organizations in terms of
trust, commitment, and identification influence the donation
behavior [81,116,117]. One of the effective tools to let individuals
 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
know what a nonprofit organization does and how it helps its
victims and beneficiaries is storytelling, and many nonprofits deem
storytelling as a means to differentiate themselves from others in
the minds of (prospective) donors and the public. Merchant et al.
[94] studied the relationship between charitable organizations’
storytelling and emotion and found that problem description can
indeed arouse negative emotions, which in turn can be alleviated
through the opportunity to donate to the identified cause, after
which, the donor would experience greater positive emotions and
lesser negative emotions.
In prior research, beneficiaries of donations can be people who
suffer painful experiences such as those going through a natural
disaster or victims of traumatizing experiences [52,123,149,150].
They can also be organizations such as alumni organizations
[60,104] and open source software platforms [81]. In social media,
the beneficiaries are individuals who volunteer their time to create
contents, contribute knowledge, and provide service. On the one
hand, users who donate to content creators want to help the
creators to achieve their mission, have a better life, or encourage
them to provide high-quality contents or service. Such voluntary
donation provides an incentive for content creators. On the other
hand, users decide whether to donate to content creators after
consuming the creators’ contents or service. It is similar to paying
in exchange for such contents or service, which is different from
the traditional donation behavior. Therefore, donation in social
media is not only a charitable behavior but also a consumptive
behavior.
2.1.2. Consumptive attribute of donation behavior in social media
The consumptive attribute of donation behavior implies that
when users consume creators’ contents or service, they can pay
any price they want. It is similar to the PWYW pricing model,
which entails the consumer setting the price of a product or
service [82]. Consumers can set any price equal to or above zero,
and the seller may not refuse this price [76]. PWYW as a
marketing strategy has been popular in real-world applications
and increases customers’ purchase intention, especially for
service and digital goods [75]. Academic researchers have
explored customers’ motivation of paying. For example, Kim
et al.’s [76] pioneering research on the factors affecting PWYW
payments revealed that consumers’ personal characteristics such
as fairness, altruism, satisfaction, loyalty, and income influence
the PWYW prices they pay. Building on Kim et al.’s [76] research,
Kunter [82] found that avoiding the feeling of guilt and social
norm are important factors that also drive PWYW payments.
Furthermore, Marett et al. [93] distinguished economic drivers
including price consciousness and prior usage of the app and
social factors including fairness and loyalty while investigating
online PWYW for electronic device applications. Because sellers
using PWYW face the risk that customers may exploit their
advantage and pay either nothing at all or a price below the costs,
other researchers have explored the pricing mechanisms under
PWYW. For example, Schons et al. [120] examined the potential
dynamics in prices paid from individuals’ perspective using latent
growth modeling. They found that repetition negatively influen-
ces customers’ price behavior.
In a PWYW process, the customers may offer what they
consider to be fair prices for a product or service because the
customers and sellers will tend to maintain a fair relationship to
avoid the pressure of unfair transactions [64,76,93]. In social
media, this can also be a reason that explains the motivation of the
donation behavior. Furthermore, the key objective of PWYW is to
maximize the seller’s profits and achieve competition advantage,
where some sellers use it as a promotional tool and others use it as
a sustainable pricing mechanism [76,120]. In other words, PWYW
is a marketing strategy designed by the sellers. However, in social
839
media, content creators do not provide knowledge or service for
their financial gains, and users generally consume such knowledge
or service for free. Users donate to content creators to show their
appreciation for the knowledge or service provided, encourage
future content creation behaviors, and help content creators enjoy
a better life. As a result, donation in social media is more than just
PWYW.
Finally, donation behavior in social media describes the
behavior where a user is willing to make a monetary or
nonmonetary donation to a content creator, which involves both
charitable and consumptive attributes. That is, the donor pays the
content creator any price she wants depending on her charitable
emotion, consumption of the knowledge or service, or both.
2.2. Attachment theory
Attachment theory is developed to explain interpersonal bonds
that connect an individual with a specific target [22]. Attachment
to a specific target such as a person or object affects one’s
allocation of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral resources to the
target [61]. In early attachment studies, the desire to make an
emotional attachment to a particular target serves as a basic need
[1], beginning from an infant or child’s attachment to her primary
caretakers [21] and going into the adulthood with kinships,
friendships, and romantic relationships [134].
Attachment leads to strong motivational and behavioral out-
comes such as the desire to maintain physical proximity and the
willingness to defend and invest cognitive and financial resources
in the attachment target [9,43,143]. Thus, a person who is strongly
attached to a particular target will be dedicated to the target and
will strive to protect and preserve interactions with the object [42].
In the marketing literature, many researchers conceptualized
the relationship between consumers and a brand as emotional
brand attachment and investigated its influence on consumers’
purchases [40,62,121,143], positive word-of-mouth [42,138], re-
purchase [91], brand loyalty [92,138,139], and forgiveness [42,50].
In the information systems (IS) literature, Choi [30] indicated
that users’ attachment to IS products has a positive influence on
their intention to get involved in online communities for the
products. On the basis of Ren et al. [113], IS researchers identified
two dimensions of attachment, namely identity-based attachment
and bond-based attachment, and they regard them as the main
factors that affect user participation, willingness to help, retention,
and knowledge sharing behavior in virtual communities [32,113].
Choi [31] showed that attachment is a more influential predictor of
demanding contributory behaviors (e.g. community involvement)
than loyalty and satisfaction.
In the fan–celebrity relationship context, Stever [125] revealed
that once a fan develops an attachment to a celebrity, her
proximity-seeking system will be activated as if she is in a
relationship with a child or a romantic partner. As a result, fans can
spend hours looking at the celebrity’s photographs and videos,
collecting memorabilia, and becoming passionate consumers of
the celebrity’s work. In particular, sports fans have been shown to
endorse their favorite teams against all odds [12]. Although this
behavior of supporting highly unlikely events seems irrational, it is
reminiscent of a typical attachment.
In the donation literature, a number of university fund-raising
and alumni donation studies have shown that attachment to the
university can be a significant predictor of donation [38,132]. In
addition, as a construct similar to attachment [40,55,132],
commitment is also found to positively impact donation behavior.
For example, Sargeant et al. [116] argued that commitment
significantly influences donors’ nonprofit giving behavior. Krish-
namurthy and Tripathi [81] found that commitment to open source
software platform contributes to the decision to donate.
840 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
In summary, attachment is one of the factors that drive
commitment, loyalty, and consumer’s helping behavior. When
users are emotionally attached to the target object, they are likely
to expend more of their own resources such as time, energy, and
financial resources to strengthen the relationship [9]. In the virtual
context, because of the lack of social pressure and because
freeriding is more prevalent, content creators have to ensure their
knowledge and service appeal to prospective followers and donors.
Therefore, we apply the attachment theory to explain why users
donate to content creators in social media.
2.3. Socio-technical systems
We use the socio-technical systems perspective [135], a concept
initially introduced to understand an organization from both social
and technological perspectives, to investigate user motivation to
donate to content creators in social media. In a socio-technical
system, the social system focuses on the relationship among
people and their attributes such as attitude, value, and skills,
whereas the technical system emphasizes the processes, tasks, and
technologies to produce the designated output [20]. These two sets
of factors affect each other in producing goods and service and
operating a business [107]. Socio-technical systems as a framework
have been widely used in previous studies. For example, Kim et al.
[74] argued that society, culture, and technology play core roles in
building the information and communication technology ecosys-
tem. Yu et al. [147] employed the socio-technical systems
framework to study users’ Smart TV adoption. Some IS researchers
Fig. 1. Research Model.
argued that social media such as microblog are socio-technical
information platforms [140], and users can obtain knowledge or
achieve interpersonal outcomes through the platforms in addition
to communicating with others [13,57,58]. Therefore, many studies
have applied the socio-technical systems framework to study user
participation and contribution behavior. For example, Chai and
Kim [27] investigated users’ knowledge sharing on social
networking sites from both social and technical aspects. Wang
et al. [140] examined the influences of technical and network effect
factors on microblog users’ behavior through the lens of the socio-
technical systems framework.
In our study, users donated to content creators when and after
they consume the contents or service in social media. The behavior
of users during the process of content/service consumption and
donation will provide insights into the nature of their interactions,
and social media platforms will provide and guide users to
accomplish such experiences and behaviors. Thus, this study
investigates how social aspects motivate user donation behavior in
social media along with the consideration of technical and
environmental factors. In addition, the combination of the
socio-technical systems framework and attachment theory allows
us to examine the effects of both social and technical factors on
attachment in explaining social media donation behavior.
3. Research model and hypotheses
In the present study, we examined the drivers of users’ donation
to content creators in social media using the attachment theory
 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
and the socio-technical systems framework. Our research model is
depicted in Fig. 1. Next, we explain the theoretical groundings of
the constructs and develop the research hypotheses.
3.1. Users’ emotional attachment
According to self-expansion theory [9,143], users’ emotional
attachment has strong motivational and behavioral implications
because an individual who is deeply attached to a person or object
is more willing to invest in that target to sustain or strengthen the
relationship with it. In the extant literature, many researchers have
studied emotional brand attachment. For example, bonds and
connections with a brand can be regarded as long-term outcomes
of the brand relationship that strongly predicts the frequency of
past purchases and the likelihood of future purchases [42,55,132].
If a user is attached to a product, person, or an object, she will be
more likely to engage in demanding behaviors such as expending
more resources (e.g., time, energy) to answer other users’
questions or providing suggestions and developing user-driven
marketing campaign [30]. In consumer–celebrity relationship
research, emotional attachment plays an important role in
explaining consumer and fan behavior [12,47,125]. For example,
Ilicic and Webster [63] revealed that consumers respond more
strongly to endorsements by celebrities to whom they are
emotionally attached than those to whom they are not emotionally
attached. Fans are willing to spend hours to review each piece of
information and purchase goods about the celebrities they like
[125].
In the donation context, it has been shown that donors are
willing to donate to organizations they trust and are committed to
[89,98,116,117]. Similarly, Brady et al. [23] showed that people
donate because they are attached to an organization or a cause. In
addition, loyal customers pay higher prices than others in a PWYW
setting because they want to avoid the potential embarrassment
associated with paying a low price, and they have a desire to
maintain and strengthen the relationship with the seller [76,93].
Therefore, we define emotional attachment to a content creator in
this research as the emotion-laden bonds and connections with a
content creator that reflects a user’s affective commitment and
desire to maintain and strengthen the relationship with the
content creator. Such emotional attachment can produce a positive
influence on the user’s donation intention. Therefore, we
hypothesize the following:
H1. Emotional attachment to a content creator is positively
associated with a user’s intention to donate to the content
creator.
3.2. Functional dependence
Functional dependence as user attachment has been used to
investigate the interdependence among group members in
performing tasks. It reflects group structure, and the functional
dependence level will affect an employee’s work style and attitude
toward the organization and other members [97]. Interdepen-
dence theory suggests that such dependence is an essential part in
determining how and what type of relationships will be developed
[73]. It also influences coordination and communication patterns,
trust, and members’ commitment to organizations as high
functional dependence makes group members to expect their
roles to be important to the group [36,111,126]. Similar to
functional dependence, functional attachment is defined as how
well a setting and condition support goal achievement [66,133] and
influence a consumer’s emotional states and behavior [144]. The
strength of an individual’s dependence on an object may be
associated with the investment in the object and the willingness to
841
make financial sacrifices to obtain it or help it to achieve its goals
such as paying a premium price or performing additional tasks
[70,132]. Social media provide technological support for users so
that the users can communicate, share, consume knowledge, and
follow other users whom they like [14,29,48].
In this study, we used functional dependence on the social
media platform as the technical factor for characterizing the extent
of interdependence between a user and the social media platform
for communicating, sharing, consuming knowledge, and following
other users. Thus, users with different degrees of functional
dependence on social media will differ in their attitudes and
behaviors. For example, a high level of dependence in social media
as perceived by a user may lead to customer loyalty and encourage
behaviors such as performing additional tasks that are not
required, committing extra time in social media, and intending
to benefit the social media [70]. Therefore, users’ willingness to
make financial sacrifices and intention to donate to content
creators on the social media that they depend on will be higher
because this behavior is a way to benefit the social media.
Moreover, users who rely heavily on social media would have more
time and chance to share and consume knowledge and find friends
or other users they want to connect with because the platform
provides necessary resources and capabilities that enable them to
achieve their goals and build relationships with other users or
content creators. Such functional dependence will lead to users’
emotional attachment to content creators and increase users’
donation intention. Thus, we hypothesize the following:
H2a. Functional dependence on social media is positively
related to a user’s intention to donate to a content creator.
H2b. Functional dependence on social media is positively
related to a user’s emotional attachment to a content creator.
3.3. Social system
As discussed earlier, the social system refers to the relationships
among people and their attributes such as attitude, value, and skills
[20]. We identified three constructs, namely identification,
interaction, and information value, as characteristics of the social
system. In our context, identification refers to users’ identification
with a content creator, which will result in their positive attitude
toward the content creator and increase their willingness to build
long-term relationships with her; interaction focuses on users’
communication with a content creator, which is regarded as a type
of user–content creator relationship; information value refers to
users’ perception of acquiring knowledge, experience, and service
from the content creator. It is related to a content creator’s skill
level and can increase users’ skill levels [107].
3.3.1. Identification
Identification is a cognitive assessment of the degree of overlap
between the self and a target organization, group, or another
individual [24,102]. It has been studied as an important construct
in the organizational behavior and marketing literature. The
consequences of an individual’s identification include support for
the social group, social attraction to members of the group, and
willingness to build long-term relationships with companies,
organizations, or other objects they identify with [11,17]. For
instance, a high level of perceived overlap between self-image and
organizational image will make one psychologically attached to
and care about the organization, which motivates them to commit
to the achievement of the goals, willingly exert more effort, and
actively collaborate with organizational members [26,136,141]. In
this research, we argue that if users perceive a high degree of
overlap between self-personality and content creators’ personality,
842 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
they will have a sense of identification with the content creators,
which makes the users to like the content creators more and want
to build relationships with them. Therefore, we hypothesize the
following:
H3. Identification is positively related to a user’s emotional
attachment to a content creator.
3.3.2. Interaction
According to the extant literature, interactive characteristics of
social media and online communities include three major aspects:
knowledge sharing, interactivity, and engagement [83]. Knowl-
edge sharing refers to users’ sharing and the discussion of
information and personal experiences [67,99]. Interactivity is
defined as the extent to which users can interact with each other
on the online platform [67,99]. Engagement refers to users’ positive
perceptions of their participation in activities hosted by the online
platform [2]. In this research, we focus on interaction because it
allows users to interact and communicate with content creators
and other users in social media. Such interaction makes them feel
more socially connected, increases the chance that others can
weigh in, and puts more focus on content creators [16,33,41].
Thomson [131] and Lin and Chen [91] argued that interaction
between consumers and brands helps create attachment to brands
and predict consumers’ commitment and specific purchases such
as paying high prices and repurchase behavior. Similarly, interac-
tion with other people drives the development of interpersonal
attraction: when individuals’ interactions increase in frequency,
the likelihood of liking others will also increase [45,113]. In online
communities, social interaction gives users the chance for self-
disclosure and friendship building with others, which increases
common bond attachment [46]. Therefore, the more a user
interacts with a content creator and with other users who consume
the same creator’s contents, the stronger an emotional bond will be
established. Therefore,
H4. Interaction is positively related to a user’s emotional
attachment to a content creator.
3.3.3. Information value
Perceived value refers to “a consumer’s assessment of the utility of
a product based on perception of what is received and what is given”
[151]. Perceived value has been applied to investigate business
issues since the 1990s [49,151]. As a context-specific perception, it
can drive an individual’s attitude and behavior such as satisfaction
[39], trust [112], relationship quality [10], loyalty [85], purchase
intention [108], and word of mouth [96]. In addition, creating
greater value for consumers through a better understanding of
their needs and desires is at the heart of the relationship–
marketing paradigm because perceived value directly influences
consumer commitment [100]. Perceived value incorporates three
theoretical types of value: functional value (acquire functional,
utilitarian, and physical performance), emotional value (acquire
feelings and affective states), and social value (enhancement of
one’s self-concept) [128]. In this study, we focus on information
value, which is a functional value regarding users’ perception of
obtaining knowledge, experience, and service from content
creators in social media. When users perceive a high information
value of the knowledge or service provided by a content creator,
they will follow the creator and build a long-term relationship to
enhance their experience and further obtain more knowledge,
innovative information, or interesting news. Therefore, we
hypothesize the following:
H5. Information value is positively related to a user’s emotional
attachment to a content creator.
3.4. Technical system
According to the pervious literature, the technical system
consists of the tools, techniques, procedures, and devices used by
users to accomplish the tasks in social media [107]. Therefore, we
propose competitiveness, sociability, and personalization as
characteristics of the technical system. They denote features of
the functional tools and distinctive mechanisms provided by the
social media platform to the users to accomplish the tasks and
increase their engagement in social media.
3.4.1. Competitiveness
Competitive mechanics are an effective and important tool in
game design [101]. Salen and Zimmerman [115] described that “the
competitive striving toward a goal is fundamental in giving shape to
the structure of a game and the way that the game creates meaning”
([115], p. 255). In particular, competitiveness in games can evoke
several cognitive and affective effects including perceived impor-
tance of ability [3], involvement [137], satisfaction [68], and
Internet addiction [18]. For example, Ozcelik et al. [106] indicated
that the elements of play, competition, and challenge in computer
and video games increase players’ motivation, engagement, and
willingness to spend more time on knowledge tasks within the
game. Thus, attracting players through comparison processes is a
basic game design principle [71]. Social media platforms imitate
game design to provide competitive features that arouse users’
affection and behavior. For example, YY platform ranks content
creators by the number of virtual gifts they have received. Once a
user donates a virtual gift to a performer, the donation information
including the donor’s name and amount of donation will be
broadcasted live to all subscribers. Twitch.tv ranks content
creators by the amount of donations they have received and
inserts the donation link on the performer’s home page. We define
competitiveness in this study as the degree to which a user feels
that social media involves competition [4]. According to social
comparison theory, if users perceive competitiveness and detect a
discrepancy in abilities or opinions in social media, they will spend
more efforts to enhance their abilities, reduce the discrepancy, and
protect their superiority [44]. In this process, users will become
more attached to social media. Therefore, we have the following
hypothesis:
H6. Competitiveness is positively associated with a user’s
functional dependence on social media.
3.4.2. Sociability
Sociability refers to the characteristics of a social media system
that support “a state of being sociable,” where users enjoy
interacting with each other through the technology-enabled space
[110]. The level of perceived sociability feature determines
whether the technology-enabled environment allows users to
interact with each other comfortably [109]. It gives users the
opportunity to present and build their own virtual images and
requires users to spend more time, effort, and money in such
image-building activities in social media [7]. Therefore, such
technology-enabled environment exhibiting a greater level of
sociability may create stronger feelings of affection, trust, and
belongingness [122], which in turn will reinforce the perception of
attachment to social media [105]. In this study, sociability of social
media facilitates users’ communication and interaction, and it
brings convenience to users in completing their routine tasks such
as building virtual images. Therefore, we hypothesize the
following:
H7. Sociability is positively related to a user’s functional
dependence on social media.
 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850 843

3.4.3. Personalization 4.1. Questionnaire design

Personalization implies that contents in social media will
effectively articulate a user’s personal preferences and needs [80].
Platforms provide relevant and customized recommendations to
users to match their idiosyncratic preferences and needs [80] and
make a good impression on the users [152]. In social media, these
recommended items are put under a distinct category with labels
such as “personalized recommendations,” “unique offers for you,”
and “the users you are following also like,” which encourage users’
exploration [129]. In addition, personalization also tailors unique
services to users using information technology. For example, some
social media platforms provide customized functions for users to
alter their interfaces and interactions to match their preferences. In
this case, users will spend time, effort, and money to actively
customize including constructing their profiles and presenting
their preferred identities. Users’ investment in the personalization
process may lead them to develop a strong sense of connection
with the platform [30,153]. Therefore, we hypothesize the
following:
H8. Personalization is positively related to a user’s functional
dependence on social media.
4. Methodology
YY platform (YY.com), a live video streaming website, is one of
the most successful social media websites and the first platform to
provide the donation function in China. In the present research, we
tested our proposed research model on the basis of a questionnaire
survey of YY platform users. We next discuss the details of our
research methodology.
When developing the questionnaire, we adapted existing
validated scales to suit the context of this study. All constructs
were measured using multi-item perceptual scales and were
measured on a seven-point Likert scale with the two anchors being
“strongly disagree” and “strongly agree.” Items for donation
intention were adapted from Merchant et al. [94] and Ye et al.
[146]; items for emotional attachment were adapted from Ren
et al. [113]; and items for functional dependence were adapted
from Antioco et al. [8]. The measures for the antecedents of
emotional attachment and functional dependence were adapted as
follows: identification based on Brown et al. [24] and Tuškej et al.
[136]; interaction from Kuo and Feng [83]; information value from
Lee et al. [86]; competitiveness based on Anderson and Carnagey
[4] and Nebel et al. [101]; sociability based on Animesh et al. [7];
and personalization based on Zhou et al. [153].
As the respondents were Chinese, we followed the back
translation method to ensure that the English and Chinese
questionnaires were similar. First, a researcher whose native
language is Chinese translated these items into Chinese. Next, to
prevent altering the semantic contents of the measurements
during translation, different researchers translated the Chinese
version back to English. Subsequently, these researchers compared
the two English versions. The translation process did not induce
any language bias into the survey design, and the degree of
correspondence between the original and the translated English
versions was very high. We then invited 25 participants to check
for any ambiguity in wording and format and established the
validity of the questionnaire. The final questionnaire used in the
survey is presented in Appendix A.

Table 1
Demographic Information of the Participants.

Category Item Count Percentage

Gender Male 196 64.7
Female 107 35.5

Age <18 3 1.0

18–24 126 41.6
25–30 139 45.9
31–40 32 10.5
>40 3 1.0

Education High school or below 36 11.9

Associate’s or bachelor’s degree 258 85.1
Master’s degree or higher 9 3.8

Occupation Unemployed 9 3.8

Student 38 12.7
Corporate or government 167 55.1
Freelancers or self-employed 88 29.0
Others 1 0.4

Monthly Income (in yuan) None 19 6.3

>1000 19 6.3
1000–2999 67 22.1
3000–4999 126 41.9
5000–6999 65 21.4
>7000 6 2.0

Length of YY platform Usage <3 months 27 8.8

3–6 months 48 15.9
6 months–1 year 55 18.0
1–2 years 79 26.2
>2 years 94 31.1
844 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850

4.2. Data collection
The data for this study were collected from users of YY platform.
YY’s users donate to content creators (live broadcasters) by giving
virtual gifts purchased on the platform. The content creators will
get a portion of the value of the gifts they receive as their income.
Donation is also a major source of revenue for YY. According to YY’s
2014 fourth quarter financial report [148], its revenues from online
music and entertainment donation increased by 100.9% to 676.2
million yuan (109.0 million US dollars) from a year ago. It also
experienced a 65.5% year-over-year increase in the number of
paying users to 1,4993,000 and a 21.4% increase in average revenue
per user to 453 yuan (75 US dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Therefore, we selected YYplatform because it was one of the most
well-known social media sites in China with a successful business
model that incorporated the donation function. A survey hyperlink
was posted on YY platform from November 14 to December 17, 2015.
Each participant had an opportunity to win monetary rewards after
completing the survey. The responses were scrutinized and invalid
responses including those with the same answer to all questions,
those with missing responses, and those finished in less than 5 min
(minimal completion time based on the pilot test) were removed. In
addition, the user’s ID and IP address were recorded, and we deleted
those responses with repeated IP addresses or user IDs to eliminate
duplicate responses. At the end, we obtained 303 valid responses
from 345 completed surveys.
The demographic characteristics of the respondents are
presented in Table 1. The sample was predominantly male, which
matched the composition of registered users on YY platform [34].
Most of the respondents’ ages were between 18 and 30 years, and
more than 50% of the respondents had used YY platform for more
than 1 year.
4.3. Data analysis and results
We first used the principal components analysis to test the
convergent and discriminant validities of the scales. The Kaiser–
Meyer–Olkin statistic for our sample was 0.948, indicating that the
data were appropriate for factor analysis [72]. All the indicators
loaded on the expected factors and factor loadings exceeded 0.6,
suggesting good convergent and discriminant validities.
Because our research involved self-reported responses from a
single source, we tested the common method bias using Harman’s
single factor test. Nine factors were extracted from the data,
explaining 81.2% of the variance. The most significant factor
accounted for 43.4% of the variance. Although this value was less
than 50%, we further tested for common method bias using Liang
et al.’s [87] method. The result is presented in Table 2. The average
substantively explained variance of the indicators was 0.7923,
whereas the average method-based variance was 0.0039. The ratio of
substantive variance to method-based variance was approximately
203:1. In addition, most method factor loadings were not significant.
Because the method variance was small and nonsignificant, we
concluded that common method bias was not a problem in our
research.

Table 2
Common Method Bias Analysis.

Construct Indicator Substantive factor loading (R1) R12 Method factor loading (R2) R22
Interaction INT1 0.9436 0.8904 0.0255 0.00065
INT2 0.9258 0.8571 0.0117 0.00014
INT3 0.9217 0.8495 0.0133 0.00018

Identification IDE1 0.8771 0.7693 0.0008 0.00000064

IDE2 0.8893 0.7908 0.0088 0.00007
IDE3 0.7956 0.633 0.079 0.00624
IDE4 0.8958 0.8024 0.0706 0.00498

Information value IV1 0.9194 0.8453 0.0611 0.00373

IV2 0.9314 0.8675 0.0108 0.00012
IV3 0.7937 0.6299 0.0735 0.00540

Emotional attachment EA1 0.8066 0.6506 0.0842 0.00708

EA2 0.9447 0.8924 0.0523 0.00273
EA3 0.7055 0.4977 0.1664 0.02769

Competitiveness COM1 0.9473 0.8974 0.0694 0.00481

COM2 0.8329 0.6937 0.0955 0.00912
COM3 0.7505 0.5633 0.0472 0.00222

Personalization PER1 0.8357 0.6984 0.0529 0.0028

PER2 0.9866 0.9734 0.1071 0.0115
PER3 0.855 0.731 0.0555 0.003

Sociability SOC1 0.8292 0.6876 0.0844 0.00712

SOC2 0.9642 0.9297 0.0715 0.00511
SOC3 0.9352 0.8746 0.0108 0.00011

Functional dependence FD1 0.8905 0.793 0.0387 0.00149

FD2 0.957 0.9158 0.0425 0.00181
FD3 0.9225 0.851 0.0031 0.00001

Donation intention DI1 0.9296 0.8642 0.0015 0.000002

DI2 0.9077 0.8239 0.0163 0.00027
DI3 0.9532 0.9086 0.0479 0.00229
DI4 0.8322 0.6926 0.035 0.00123

Average 0.8855 0.7888 0.0074 0.0039

 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850 845

Table 3
Results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Construct Items Mean SD Loading AVE CR a

Interaction INT1 4.99 1.258 0.9195 0.8652 0.9506 0.893
INT2 5.03 1.347 0.9378
INT3 4.93 1.330 0.9332

Identification IDE1 4.84 1.234 0.8773 0.7471 0.9219 0.9273

IDE2 4.85 1.207 0.8835
IDE3 4.88 1.234 0.8571
IDE4 4.42 1.366 0.8387

Information value IV1 5.31 1.102 0.8655 0.7782 0.9133 0.8572

IV2 5.62 1.023 0.9211
IV3 5.90 1.036 0.8589

Emotional attachment EA1 5.25 1.351 0.8986 0.7662 0.9216 0.8929

EA2 5.60 1.179 0.858
EA3 5.33 1.314 0.8167

Competitiveness COM1 4.74 1.396 0.886 0.7657 0.9074 0.8472

COM2 4.77 1.341 0.9002
COM3 4.88 1.372 0.8065

Personalization PER1 5.10 1.306 0.874 0.797 0.9217 0.8727

PER2 5.22 1.019 0.9026
PER3 5.40 1.063 0.9014

Sociability SOC1 5.40 1.159 0.8922 0.8283 0.9354 0.8963

SOC2 5.20 1.064 0.912
SOC3 5.25 1.216 0.9259

Functional dependence FD1 5.10 1.299 0.9223 0.8522 0.9453 0.9133

FD2 5.50 0.951 0.9214
FD3 5.58 0.976 0.9258

Donation intention DI1 5.62 1.032 0.9284 0.8217 0.9485 0.9273

DI2 5.48 1.203 0.9206
DI3 5.49 1.160 0.9134
DI4 5.55 1.263 0.862

4.4. Measurement model 4.5. Hypothesis testing

We examined the reliability and validity of the measurement On the basis of the factor loading results, we retained all the
model using SmartPLS 2.0, which allowed us to test the items to test the hypotheses using SmartPLS 2.0 with boot-
measurement and structural models simultaneously. As shown strapping for standard error estimation. The results are summa-
in Table 3, the Cronbach’s alphas and the composite reliabilities rized in Fig. 2. Overall, the results show that the explained
were all higher than 0.70, thus exhibiting a good reliability [103]. variances of the dependent constructs were quite high (53% for
The average variance extracted (AVE) values were all above 0.5, donation intention, 52.6% for emotional attachment to content
showing the data had a good convergent validity [51]. creator, and 51.9% for functional dependence on social media),
The discriminant validity is supported when the square root of indicating that the research model had a sufficient predictive
the AVE is greater than the correlation between the focal construct power. Specifically, attachment theory and socio-technical systems
and other constructs. As shown in Table 4, the square roots of the perspectives provide useful insights into users’ donation behavior
AVEs for all constructs were greater than their correlations with in social media.
other constructs, thus indicating adequate discriminant validity. Regarding the significance of the hypothesized relationships,
emotional attachment significantly influenced a user’s donation
intention with a path coefficient of 0.539 (p < 0.001), thus
supporting H1. Functional dependence contributed significantly
Table 4
Correlations Between Latent Constructs. to donation intention with a path coefficient of 0.269 (p < 0.001),
and it also affected emotional attachment with a path coefficient of
COM DI EA FD IDE INT PER IV SOC
0.236 (p < 0.01), thus supporting H2a and H2b. Regarding the
COM 0.875 antecedents of emotional attachment and functional dependence,
identification (b = 0.192, p < 0.001), interaction (b = 0.179, p
DI 0.628 0.906
EA 0.618 0.699 0.875
FD 0.403 0.592 0.609 0.923 < 0.01), and information value (b = 0.259, p < 0.01) significantly
IDE 0.445 0.515 0.562 0.517 0.864 influenced emotional attachment, whereas sociability (b=0.331,
INT 0.461 0.564 0.563 0.568 0.591 0.930 p < 0.001) and personalization (b = 0.473, p < 0.001) significantly
PER 0.406 0.501 0.595 0.670 0.510 0.491 0.893 influenced functional dependence, thus supporting H3, H4, H5, H7,
IV 0.361 0.531 0.617 0.667 0.555 0.530 0.624 0.882
SOC 0.571 0.621 0.737 0.609 0.562 0.613 0.589 0.524 0.910
and H8. However, competitiveness did not have a significant effect
on functional dependence. Thus, H6 was not supported.
846 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
Fig. 2. Hypothesis Testing Results.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; the dashed line represents nonsignificant path.
5. Discussion and implications
The current study investigates the motivation behind users’
donation behavior in social media. Using a questionnaire survey of
social media users of YY.com, we examined the complex relation-
ships between emotional attachment, functional dependence, and
donation intention through the lens of attachment theory and
socio-technical systems framework. Our research has the follow-
ing findings and implications.
5.1. Discussion of results
This study examines users’ donation behavior by integrating the
socio-technical systems framework with attachment theory. The
results depict a high degree of explained variances for all
dependent variables. The empirical results also reveal interesting
findings. First, we found that it is useful to explain users’ donation
behavior using both social and technological factors based on
socio-technical systems. Second, drawing on attachment theory,
we found that users develop emotional attachment to content
creators and depend on social media platform functionally. These
two types of attachment significantly influence users’ donation
intention. In addition, functional dependence also indirectly affects
donation intention through emotional attachment. This indicates
that social media as the platform provide an environment for users
to present themselves and develop relationships, and they play a
core role in influencing users’ affection and behavior. Third, among
social factors, identification, interaction, and information value
positively influence emotional attachment. For example, social
media with high interactivity can better meet users’ needs [83] and
allow them to spend more time to discuss the topics they are
interested in. During this process, users’ intention to maintain
long-term relationships with other users will strengthen. Finally,
regarding technological features, sociability and personalization
positively influence functional dependence. For example, accord-
ing to the use and gratification theory, one medium is chosen over
others because of its ability to better serve a user’s need [145], and
such perceived personalization in turn influences users’ medium
selection decision.
Although most of our hypotheses are supported, the relation-
ship between competitiveness and function dependence is found
to be nonsignificant. One plausible explanation is that users’
perception of competitiveness on YY platform can be either a
positive or negative emotion because it is impossible to make each
user win and rank higher. In other words, it will make some users
feel discouraged when ranked low; consequently, they may not
develop a positive attitude toward the social media platform.
Therefore, competitiveness may not affect users’ dependence on
social media.
5.2. Theoretical implications
From the theoretical perspective, our study presents a few
interesting findings. First, we extend the research on donation
behavior to the social media context by integrating charitable
behavior and PWYW, a first in academic research. In traditional
donation, the beneficiaries are often people who suffer painful
experiences. In this research, we study users’ donation to content
creators in social media. In addition, we examined PWYW in social
media, a setting where content creators’ behaviors are not
primarily driven by financial incentives. As most studies on
donation behavior focus on donor motivation and nonprofit
organization performance [95,146] and research on PWYW
examines the pricing mechanism and product sales, this study
 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
contributes to the donation and PWYW literature by understand-
ing donation behavior in the consumption of “free” contents
through the lens of the attachment theory.
Second, we fill a gap in the study of consumer behavior by
exploring how the characteristics of user perception influence
donation in social media. On the basis of the attachment theory, we
identified two types of attachments—emotional attachment and
functional dependence—that influence users’ donation intention in
social media. Emotional attachment is an important factor that
influences users’ donation behavior, and functional dependence
has direct and indirect impacts on donation. These empirical
results reveal that the theoretical perspectives in our study are
effective in explaining and predicting future donation intention.
Third, our study extends the understanding of how user
attachment influences donation behavior from social and technical
perspectives on the basis of socio-technical systems. The findings
indicate that both social and technological factors of the social
media are important in promoting users’ donation intention.
Although studies have shown the significance of social factors on
traditional donation behavior [78,89], our research revealed the
importance of technological factors in social media. The present
study found that three social factors (identification, interaction,
and information value) and two technical factors (sociability and
personalization) are indirect predictors of donation intention in
social media.
5.3. Practical implications
The findings of this study also offer a few interesting practical
implications. To predict whether people are willing to donate,
social media providers and nonprofit organizations should pay
attention to both social and technical factors. For example,
nonprofit organizations can develop their platforms or draw
support from social media, which can boost the organizations’
ability to strategically and efficiently engage a large audience [119]
and build relationships through communication or other mecha-
nisms [142]. Emotional attachment and functional dependence
provide goals or guidelines for practitioners. Social media
providers should take strategic actions to enhance users’ attach-
ment to content creators or beneficiaries and their reliance on the
social media platform to solve their routine problems and achieve
their goals.
In addition, because technical factors are good indicators of the
willingness to donate, social media providers and nonprofit
organizations should manage the technological features and test
the impacts of these features on users’ donation behavior.
Practitioners can increase sociability by providing comfortable
and convenient channels of communication for users and
beneficiaries to build and strengthen relationships. Specifically,
practitioners should spend more efforts to increase personaliza-
tion that significantly enhances users’ perceptions. For instance,
they can provide different types of users with personalized settings
and recommend other users or content creators based on users’
usage patterns and tasks.
Our findings advise that social media providers and nonprofit
organizations should increase the opportunities for users
including prospective donors and beneficiaries to recognize each
other, and beneficiaries or content creators should focus on
building strong attachment relationships with users who may be
donors. For example, beneficiaries or content creators can offer
valuable information to increase attention and foster positive
affection from users. Moreover, beneficiaries can increase
interaction with users by discussing common interests and
providing prompt responses.
847
5.4. Limitations and future research
We acknowledge the limitations of this study. First, given the
scope of the study, there are other constructs that were not
included in the model. Future research can identify other
important antecedents that may explain social media donation
behavior from different perspectives. Second, we did not incorpo-
rate actual donation behaviors in our research model, which is one
of the limitations of all cross-sectional studies. Future research can
extend our research by considering actual donation behaviors or
the amount of the donation. Third, our results may be specific to
China as social media donation gains traction. Future research may
also extend our model to other geographical contexts or cultures.
Finally, we did not examine moderating factors such as gender,
income, and personality that may provide better insights into the
understanding of donation behavior in different situations. These
factors can be considered in future research.
6. Conclusion
This study investigates the roles of social factors (identification,
interaction, and information value) and technological factors
(sociability, competitiveness, and personalization) on users’
attachment consisting of emotional attachment and functional
dependence and how such factors further influence their donation
intention in social media. Most of the hypotheses on the impacts of
social and technical factors on attachment and donation behavior
are supported by our empirical study. Our findings suggest that
user attachment enhances donation intention. Social media
providers and nonprofit organizations should focus on the
different effects of the two types of attachment and pay attention
to both social and technical factors to encourage user donation in
social media.
Acknowledgements
This work is partially supported by grants from the National
Science Foundation of China (71332001, 71201062, 71602152, and
71602063). It is also partially supported by University of Texas Rio
Grande Valley Faculty Summer Writing Group Program.
Appendix A. Questionnaire items
Identification [24,136]
IDE1 I feel that my personality and the personality of the content creator are
very similar.
IDE2 I have a lot in common with the content creator.
IDE3 I feel that my values and the values of the content creator are very
similar.
IDE4 I perceive an overlap between my self-image and the content creator’s
image.
Interaction [83]
INT1 I can usually get quick responses to any question I bring up from the
content creator.
INT2 I have close and intensive interactions with the content creator.
INT3 I can usually get quick responses to any idea I post from the content
creator.
Information value [86]
IV1 I accumulate knowledge through the content creator’s shared
information.
IV2 I acquire novel information through the content creator.
IV3 I get interesting information through the content creator.
Personalization [153]
PER1 I set up YY platform to use it the way I want to.
PERI2 I have adapted YY platform to meet my needs.
PER3 I have chosen features offered by YY platform to suit my style of use.
848 J. Wan et al. / Information & Management 54 (2017) 837–850
Competitiveness [4,101]
COM1 YY platform makes me feel like I am competing with others when I
donate.
COM2 YY platform involves a competitive system of donation.
COM3 YY platform makes me want to rank higher.
Sociability [7]
SOC1 YY platform enables me to get a good impression of the content creator
and friends.
SOC2 YY platform enables me to develop good social relationships with the
content creator and friends.
SOC3 YY platform enables me to form close friendships with the content
creator and friends.
Emotional attachment [113]
EA1 I would like to be friends with the content creator.
EA2 I would like to interact with the content creator in the future.
EA3 I am interested in learning more about the content creator.
Functional dependence [8]
FD1 To accomplish my experience or other goals, YY platform provides
resources.
FD2 To accomplish my experience or other goals, YY platform provides
supports.
FD3 To accomplish my experience or other goals, YY platform provides
outputs.
Donation intention [94,146]
DI1 I am likely to donate to the content creator in the future.
DI2 I intend to donate to the content creator.
DI3 I will donate the next time.
DI4 If I have some money at my disposal, I am willing to donate to the
content creator.
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Jinlin Wan is a lecturer at School of Information, Central
University of Finance and Economics in China. Her
research focuses on mobile commerce, e-commerce,
social commerce, and technology adoption of Information
System. She has published in information technology and
people, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems
and Americas' Conference on Information Systems.
Yaobin Lu is a specially appointed Professor in Manage-
ment Science & Information Systems at School of
Management, Huazhong University of Science & Technol-
ogy in China. His research interests include social
commerce, mobile commerce, business mode, electronic
commerce, and related topics. He is the author of more
than 50 publications in leading international journals
such as,Journal of Management Information Systems,
Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Journal,
Information & Management, International Journal of
Electronic Commerce, and Journal of Information
Technology.
Bin Wang is a Professor of Information Systems at the
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her research
focuses on IT adoption, the performance of IT firms,
electronic commerce, mobile commerce, and social
commerce. Her research has appeared in journals such
as Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of
Business Research, Information Systems Journal, Industrial
Management & Data Systems, Information Technology and
Management, Electronic Commerce Research and Applica-
tions, and Computers in Human Behavior.
Ling Zhao is an Associate Professor of Information
Management at School of Management, Huazhong
University of Science and Technology, China. Her research
focuses on members' behaviors in virtual communities,
privacy issues in e-commerce and mobile commerce. Her
research has appeared in journals such as Information &
Management, Decision Support Systems, International
Journal of Electronic Commerce, Electronic Commerce
Research and Applications, Computers and Education and
other journals.