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Today, consumers play an active role in creating, generating and distributing the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) independent of marketers. Customer acquisition through referrals and word of mouth (WOM) has thus become an important goal for firms. In addition, mobile social networks have created valuable opportunities for eWOM. People are now able to discuss products and services of brands with their friends and acquaintances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of eWOM information on consumers’ behavioral intentions in mobile social networks.

This study employed the information adoption model (IAM), theory of reasoned action and social exchange theory to investigate the influence of eWOM information on consumers’ behavioral intentions in mobile social networks. The study used 394 respondents to evaluate the proposed model using SmartPLS software.

Results show that the quality and credibility of eWOM information has a positive direct effect on perceived information usefulness. Attitude toward eWOM information mediates the influence of perceived information usefulness on information adoption. Also, attitude toward eWOM information has a significant positive influence on behavioral intentions, such as purchase intention and forwarding of eWOM information. However, information adoption does not have any significant relationship with the forwarding of eWOM information.

This study seeks to address the dearth of research in the field of mobile social networks, especially regarding eWOM information. The study proposes a new model and empirically validates the hypothesized relationships. This research can serve as a stepping-stone for future research in this field.

This research is one of the first studies focusing on the influence of eWOM information, especially in mobile social networks. The research offers comprehensive and empirically validated factors pertaining to eWOM information in mobile social networks. The results of this study may be useful also for practitioners and managers of online companies.

A new eWOM IAM in mobile social networks is proposed based on information characteristics and consumer behavior. The model is validated afterward.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that influence people to play socially interactive games on mobile devices. Based on network externalities and theory of uses and gratifications (U&G), it seeks to provide direction for further academic research on this timely topic.

Based on 237 valid responses collected from online questionnaires, structural equation modeling technology was employed to examine the research model.

The results reveal that both network externalities and individual gratifications significantly influence the intention to play social games on mobile devices. Time flexibility, however, which is one of the mobile device features, appears to contribute relatively little to the intention to play mobile social games.

This research successfully applies a combination of network externalities theory and U&G theory to investigate the antecedents of players’ intentions to play mobile social games. This study is able to provide a better understanding of how two dimensions – perceived number of users/peers and individual gratification – influence mobile game playing, an insight that has not been examined previously in the mobile apps literature.

Social media, especially microblog, has become one of the most popular platforms for public opinion dissemination. However, so far few studies have been conducted to explore information dissemination under the mobile environment. This paper aims to introduce the approach to analyze the public opinion information dissemination in mobile social networks.

This paper chooses “network attack” as the research topic and extracts 23,567 relevant messages from Sina Microblogs to study the structure of nodes for public opinion dissemination and the characteristics of propagation paths on mobile internet. Public opinion dissemination is compared on both mobile and non-mobile terminals.

The results reveal the characteristics of public opinion dissemination in mobile environment and identify three patterns of information propagation path. This study concludes that public opinion on mobile internet propagates more widely and efficiently and generates more impact than that on the non-mobile internet.

The methods used in this study can be useful for the government and other organizations to analyze and identify problems in online information dissemination.

This paper explores the mechanism of public opinion dissemination on mobile internet in China and further investigates how to improve public opinion management through a case study related to “network attack.”

Recent smart mobile devices are capable of letting users produce various digital content, and share/upload the content to many social network services (SNS) directly via wireless network connections. The phenomenon has increased the number of people using mobile SNS applications. Although the applications have become more popular, mobile users have been restricted in the virtual communities of online SNS and are not aware of the social opportunities available to them in real-time surrounding. While they spend most of their time accessing online SNS, they have missed many opportunities to interact with others for new friendships, business opportunities or information sharing. Consequently, a new breed of mobile social network (MSN) system has arisen to assist mobile users to interact with proximal people and perform various social activities. Such a proximal-based MSN environment is termed a Mobile Social Network in Proximity (MSNP).

Developing an MSNP system needs to address a number of issues and challenges, such as heterogeneity, content/service discovery, privacy and trust, resource management, and so on. This paper identifies and describes these challenges, and reviews a number of related solutions from existing literature. In the follow up, this paper addresses a number of open challenges in the MSNP domain.

Although various works have been proposed to enable and overcome challenges in MSNP, there are still many unsolved open challenges in terms of identification, content management, social-aware discovery, trust in public environment, adaptation, quality of service and the development of MSNP. We have addressed these challenges in this paper as future research directions in the MSNP domain.

This paper provides an original literature review in MSNP and identifies a number of open challenges as research direction in the MSNP domain.

Due to customers' extensive avoidance behavior, social commerce may be less successful than anticipated. This study investigates the underlying mechanism and antecedents that influence customers' avoidance of peer-generated advertisements.

Based on the general framework of avoidance behavior, we propose a theoretical model for the context of a mobile social network, with tie strength as the user-related factor and violation of shared language, advertisement relevance and information overload as contextual variables. Using survey data collected from 334 customers on WeChat, we empirically examine the research model and hypotheses.

Tie strength and advertisement relevance are negatively associated with avoidance behavior, whereas information overload and violation of shared language have significantly positive effects. Furthermore, tie strength weakens the negative relationship between violation of shared language and avoidance behavior but strengthens the positive relationship between advertisement relevance and avoidance behavior.

The findings extend understanding of advertisement avoidance behavior and can guide practitioners' improvement of advertising efficiency in mobile social networks.

By building and examining an integral model, the principal objectives of this research are to systematically explore how indirect and direct network externalities lead to user loyalty toward WeChat through the mediating effect of perceived gratifications.

The data were collected through an online survey of 688 young people in Mainland China. To empirically assess the conceptual model, zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were carried out utilizing web-based data.

Path analysis results demonstrate that indirect network externalities and direct network externalities exert a significant impact on users' hedonic gratifications and utilitarian gratifications. Moreover, the study discovers the significant mediating influences of utilitarian gratifications on the association between indirect network externalities and user loyalty.

Theoretically, this article may extend the scope of diverse studies on the association between network externalities and perceived gratifications and offer fresh insights into how mobile social media could actually improve user loyalty through enhancing perceived values among younger generation. Practically, this research assists mobile social media practitioners in retaining users and gaining competitive advantages over rival applications.

Although the extraordinary growth of WeChat has successfully become the dominant media by which individuals develop interpersonal network and contact with others, the roles of perceived gratifications between network externalities and user loyalty toward WeChat have not yet been investigated in depth. These obtained outcomes not only enrich the existing literature regarding the relationship between network externalities and affective response, but also offer fresh insights to mobile social media designers, marketers and users.

The purpose of this article is to outline a conceptual framework on mobile applications that support social interactions among users to warrant commercial viability of such applications.

We build on the social network paradigm to propose an activity-based view on mobile application usage, and theoretically link the pertinent features of mobile social networking applications (MSNAs) to a set of measurement metrics concerning their commercial viability.

The conceptual framework formulated highlights how MSNAs can be systematically designed and deployed to ensure their commercial viability.

A pertinent set of features that support social networking among the users, and their plausible mechanisms in facilitating the commercial viability of MSNAs, are explicated. This facilitates future research endeavours in systematically investigating the emerging form of mobile applications. The limitation lies in a lack of empirical data to validate the formulated propositions, which is beyond the scope of this paper and is directed for future research.

A coherent set of measurement metrics are put forward for practitioners to measure the commercial viability of an MSNA. Also theoretically based insights are derived for how they can better derive commercial values from the emerging form of mobile applications.

Most relevant previous research has focused either on the MSNAs’ technical design aspects or user behavioural issues. This research ties up the themes on technical design, user behaviour and business consideration in formulating a research framework for assessing the commercial viability of MSNAs.

This study examines the direct and indirect effect mechanisms of how using smartphones for social media is associated with college students' civic engagement via levels of communication network heterogeneity and social capital. In addition, this study tests whether such indirect effects mechanisms are moderated by the need to belong.

The study analyzes data from an online survey (N = 580) conducted at a public university. The PROCESS macro is used to examine the mediation association between mobile social media use, communication network heterogeneity, social capital, and civic engagement and the moderated mediation conditional upon need to belong.

College students who often use smartphones for social media were more likely to communicate with people who have different socio-demographic characteristics and different opinions. There was also a positive mediation mechanism between smartphone use for social media, network heterogeneity, social capital and civic engagement, which means that college students who often use mobile social media are more likely to communicate with heterogeneous others and develop a sense of social capital, which in turn led to greater levels of civic engagement. Importantly, these indirect effects of smartphone use for social media on civic engagement were stronger for those with greater levels of need to belong.

The findings of the current study are significant given that little is known about how young adults' mobile social media use is associated with communication network heterogeneity and civic engagement in their everyday life. The research expands the research agenda by investigating the most popular interactive communication media platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of behavioural intention and use behaviour towards social networking apps. Exogenous latent constructs, namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence are the key antecedents proposed based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to predict the usage intention and behaviour of social networking apps (i.e. endogenous latent constructs). Experience as a moderator is the extended construct to explain social networking apps user’s behavioural intention.

To target young generation (Millennial), a cross-sectional data collection approach was conducted to collect data from the social networking apps users (i.e. Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and others) whereby a total of 384 valid questionnaires were obtained from six universities in Malaysia. Statistical analysis using partial least squares path modelling approach and a variance-based structural equation modelling (VB-SEM) techniques is performed to analyse the measurement and structural relationship.

The findings indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence determine behavioural intention, and behavioural intention impacts social networking apps use behaviour. Moreover, the moderation analysis reveals that the relationship between effort expectancy and behavioural intention is moderated by experience, whereas the relationship between social influence and behavioural intention is not moderated by experience.

While the surge of social networking apps has gained tremendous popularity among Millennial as an attractive market segment, previous studies mainly have focussed on intention and behaviour of online users in general. Despite apps and related technologies which have opened a new era of effective communications in marketing, social networking apps usage intention and behaviour focussing on Millennial is not well understood in the current literature. This study contributes and sheds lights on the current issue of social networking apps usage intention and behaviour and looks into a key rising market segment, the Millennial users.

This study aims to improve disaster management. Social media, particularly microblog, has become a new platform for public opinion dissemination. However, few studies have been conducted to explore the structure of public opinions, the approaches for facilitating the spread of public opinions and the results of public opinion dissemination in the context of mobile internet for the purpose of improving disaster management.

This paper chooses Ebola as the research topic and extracts 14,735 Ebola-related data items from Sina Microblogs to examine the information nodes of public opinion and the characteristics of propagation paths on mobile internet. Particularly, nodes of public opinion between mobile terminals and non-mobile terminals are compared.

The results of this paper reveal the characteristics of public opinion propagation on mobile internet and verify the effectiveness of public opinion propagation on mobile internet. This study shows that public opinions propagate quickly, widely and efficiently and further generate great impacts on mobile internet.

The methods used in this study can be useful for the government agencies and other relevant organizations to monitor public opinions, identify issues and problems proactively and develop strategies in a more efficient manner to improve disaster management.

The results of this paper are helpful for related departments to monitor public opinions and to further improve disaster management.

This paper explores the mechanism of public opinion dissemination on mobile internet and further investigates how to improve disaster management through a case study related to Ebola.