Factors influencing the continuance intention to the usage of Web 2.0: An empirical study

New business models and applications have been continuously developed and popularized on the Internet. In recent years, a number of applications including blogs, Facebook, iGoogle, Plurk, Twitter, and YouTube known as Web 2.0 have become very popular. These aforementioned applications all have a strong social flavor. However, what social factors exert an influence onto their use is still unclear and remains as a research issue to be further investigated. This research studies four social factors and they are subjective norm, image, critical mass, and electronic word-of-mouth. A causal model of the satisfaction and continuance intention of Web 2.0 users as a function of these four social factors is proposed. Results indicate that user satisfaction with Web 2.0 applications significantly affects electronic word-of-mouth, which in turn significantly influences their continuance intention. In addition, subjective norm, image and critical mass all have a significant impact onto satisfaction, which in turn has an indirect significant influence on electronic word-of-mouth. Finally, all social factors have a significant direct impact on continuance intention. Finally, implications for service providers and researchers are discussed.