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Social distancing is an important strategy to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it is imperative to understand the behavioral impact of social distancing on individuals. This research studied social distancing from a cognitive appraisal of voluntary social distancing compliance (CAVSD) point of view and a non-medical perspective, specifically the psychological impact (PI) of social distancing on the usage intensity of social networking sites (SNS) during the COVID-19 outbreak in India.

The study was conducted on 477 SNS users as a full sample and groups based on age, sex and work status. The model was empirically investigated using structural equation modeling.

CAVSD was negatively associated with PI although it was not a significant predictor, while CAVSD and PI were significant predictors of SNS usage intensity; moreover, SNS usage intensity differed between groups of people.

These findings are significant for organizations, corporations and educational institutions in both the public and private sectors. There is a need to identify subsections of individuals in need of social support and relief from isolation and loneliness. Individuals are relying on social media to handle social distancing and the pandemic, and this shows up in an increase in social networking activity.

This study contributes to the existing literature by positing social networking as a basic virtual need for socialization, and social media platform assists in that. Cognitive appraisal is an important determinant of individual response.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles social networks play in households’ contribution to the provision of small hydraulic facilities (SHFs) in rural China.

This paper adopts a sample-selection ordered probit model (Greene and Hensher, 2010) to estimate the impacts of overall social-network intensity, of the number of strong ties (relatives), and of the number of weak ties (friends), using data on 1,064 representative households collected from three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shandong).

The numbers of strong ties and weak ties both have significant impacts on households’ willingness to contribute to SHFs provision, but only the latter has a significant impact on their level of contribution. More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the number of weak ties (i.e. friends) is associated with a 6.6 percent increase in households’ propensity of contributing more than 550 yuan and a 8.2 percent decrease in their propensity of contributing less than 100 yuan.

This paper is the first to examine the impacts of social networks on households’ contribution to SHFs provision in rural China. Its finding is of great policy relevance-fostering and maintaining social networks (e.g. through rural cooperatives) can significantly increase households’ contribution to public-good provision.

Interaction and communication through social networking sites (SNSs) has witnessed exponential growth every year. The rising popularity of this platform has made researchers take a deeper look at this phenomenon and try and study it in a structured fashion. The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of SNS usage intensity on the relationship between social capital and social identity. There are very few published literature studies available and none in the context of a developing economy, which is undergoing enormous digital transformation. While studies like this have been done in abundance in the Western world, it is still a new approach in this part of the world. Even though the variables that are being studied have been adapted from the work done earlier by other researchers, the application and interpretation are very different, primarily because of the context.

A primary online survey was conducted to collect data for this study. A majority of 258 respondents were in the age group of 20–40 years. Most of them had an undergraduate and/or a postgraduate degree and spent an average of 70% of their weekly time on social media. The sample size was balanced in terms of gender (male/female) as well. To validate the research model and test the hypotheses of the study, through two analysis phases including measurement model and structural model, reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), correlations and hierarchical multiple regression were deployed. The CFA was applied to assess the validity of the four factors under study.

Factors that were studied in this article were checked for content validity and reliability. Cronbach's alpha values were <1.0 indicating the reliability of the factors taken for the study. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that with the increase in bridging and SNS usage intensity, social identity also increases at a high level of bridging. Similar results were observed when regression was conducted for bonding and SNS usage intensity. Thus, the hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that SNS usage intensity positively moderated the effects of social capital on social identity. Hence, the two hypotheses were supported.

The results of this study are significant for business organizations and society as well. A similar type of study in the context of an economy, which has embarked on the path of digitization as a state-sponsored policy has not been reported.

This study examined the antecedents and consequences of intensity of SNS use in a cross-cultural context. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of three IT-related consumer characteristics – privacy concern, consumer innovativeness and propensity to share information – on the use of social networking sites (SNS) and examine if there are cross-national differences in the relationships between consumer characteristics and SNS use.

The authors developed and tested a structural equation model including consumer characteristics related to SNS usage, by using survey data of 977 SNS users in Korea and the US.

Consumer innovativeness, propensity to share information and privacy concern affected intensity of SNS use and the usage of SNS enabled social capital. In addition, the effects of innovativeness and privacy concern on the intensity of SNS use were greater in the US sample than in the Korean sample. People in the culture of high peer pressure and herding behavior tend to expect more reciprocity in social surveillance, especially among in-group members because they are interested in tracking others in the group. This tendency might alleviate the negative impact of privacy concern on the intensity of SNS use. The positive impact of innovativeness on the intensity of SNS use was alleviated in the collectivism culture. This is maybe because the imitation factor predicts the adoption behavior better than the innovation factor in the collectivism culture.

Despite several notable contributions, this study has a few limitations, which may be overcome by further research. First, this study did not considered many other personality variables. Second, most measurements were retrospective, depending on the respondents’ memory of past shopping behavior. Third, an experimental study will be needed to obtain more accurate effects of the antecedents on the intensity of SNS use in the next stage. Fourth, there are sample limitations in the study. Although this study has some limitations, it also provides very meaningful implications. For example, both the positive impact of innovativeness and the negative impact of privacy concerns on the intensity of SNS use were alleviated in the collectivistic culture.

This finding implies that SNS in the collective culture should focus more on group behavior than individual behavior in order to promote SNS use. In addition, it is an effective strategy to emphasize the innovative function of SNS in individualism culture. As privacy concern is not big problem of SNS usage in collectivism culture, it is an effective strategy to stimulate the needs of in-group surveillance.

The study contributes to the literature examining cross-cultural influence on SNS use. The study presents how consumer characteristics interact with culture in order to explain the intensity of SNS use.

The purpose of this study is to explore some quantitative indicators from the social network analysis, observe the variations of these indicators over time and determine whether these indicators fit into the traditional team development stages model or theory. The primary focus is on the perspective of social interaction rather than the suitability of the indicator, i.e. the authors will not determine the optimal indicators nor compare the performance of different indicators. This study aims to propose a quantitative method to identify the development stages of virtual teams.

Two phases were designed in this study. The first phase was a simple study to prove the preliminary ideas and explore which quantitative indicators would be suitable for analysis. In total, 16 undergraduates were randomly assigned to two virtual teams. They were required to complete an information system (IS) project through virtual teamwork and use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to communicate with each other. After proving the preliminary ideas, the authors collected communication data of the 30 virtual teams working on IS projects in the second phase. The total duration of this process was two months.

The findings practically identified three stages, which were found to be consistent with that of the previous qualitative studies. In the initial (inclusion) stage, intensity had an upward trend. In the second (control) stage, centralization had an upward trend. In the final (affection) stage, intensity and density had upward trends and centralization had a downward trend. Both density and centralization also became smooth in this final stage. The conclusion can serve as a basis for further studies in virtual team development.

A successful virtual team will help industries to reduce their costs and increase performance and benefits. The findings will help industries quickly and objectively identify which stage they are at. This quantified approach will provide managers and leaders with a simple, useful way to highlight the needs for managing different aspects of team behavior at each stage of development. After establishing this approach, managers and leaders will be able to make plans to improve existing processes, set priorities, provide suitable principles and guidelines, etc., and eventually improve virtual team performance.

In small group settings, is it the position in social networks or the content of communication that constitutes a leader? Studies focussing on the content suggest that leadership consists in creating and promoting meanings, whereas studies focussing on the connections stress that it is the network position that ‘makes a leader’. These two dimensions of leadership communication style have not been compared yet. To fill this gap, this chapter applies an emerging approach – socio-semantic network analysis – to jointly consider the content of, and the connections, in leaders' communication. Using a multisource dataset, we empirically study the social network positions (social network analysis) and the content of communication (semantic network analysis) of three leaders in a creative collective. Our findings reveal that different styles of leadership make diverse use of the content and the connections in a small group. The academic and practical implications are outlined.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what motivates college students to use LinkedIn and what inhibits them from fully adopting it.

A qualitative approach applying a “uses and gratifications” framework was used to identify the motives of and barriers faced by college students with respect to the LinkedIn usage. The study includes data collected from 30 upper-level, undergraduate business students.

Four uses and gratifications categories emerged explaining why college students would be willing to use LinkedIn. Three categories – interpersonal communication, online identity and information – are similar to those identified for using social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Career development was found to be a category gratifying only LinkedIn users. Barriers to LinkedIn adoption included students’ ignorance of the network and the erroneous perception that a presence on LinkedIn should be initiated and/or developed only after graduation.

College students’ behavior on social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, was extensively researched employing the uses and gratifications theory. LinkedIn has recently reached about 200 million users, of which about 30 million are college students and recent graduates. Still, students’ motives, usage patterns and barriers associated with LinkedIn have not been well-documented, which creates a gap that this study attempts to address. The aim is to shed light on what motivates students to use a professional network as opposed to using social networks and what key barriers might prevent college students from fully capitalizing on LinkedIn’s features.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the existing knowledge on two aspects. First, the authors introduce a conceptual model based on the social capital theory (SCT) to understand the mechanisms through which social capital factors affect consumers’ electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) engagement and purchase intentions via social network sites (SNSs). Second, the present study empirically tests and validates the proposed relationships that delineate social capital dimensions as crucial precursors of eWOM engagement and purchase intention in the specific SNS context, namely, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The authors applied both exploratory and descriptive design based on a triangulation approach. The authors adapted an in-depth interview method in the first part to better specify our constructs and hypotheses. At the quantitative part, the authors conducted the survey method on 1,169 consumers as central part of the research for empirical testing and validating our conceptual model. The authors applied structural equation modeling analysis by using AMOS 22.0.

Overall, the results of this study indicate that social capital-based drivers have a significant role underlying the eWOM engagement of consumers, while engagement in eWOM has a further effect on their purchase intentions. In this study, social network culture appears as the most dominant social driver of consumers’ engagement in eWOM, followed by tie strength and interpersonal trust.

This study extends prior research on drivers of eWOM. An integrated conceptual model under SCT is proposed and tested to verify the dimensional interrelationships and effects on consumers’ eWOM engagement and purchase intentions. Second, this work advances the understanding of eWOM behavior in a novel context, social networks. Cross-cultural comparison of our results in other regions of Turkey or different countries might enable generalizability, which is one of the limitations of the study.

This study highlights that consumers are incorporating recommendations into their social networking behavior. The findings of this study show that before constructing their social media strategies, marketers should first investigate the congruence between the cultural environment of the SNS in which they connect with their customers and the positioning of their products.

This study suggests implications about privacy guidelines for SNS regulation setters. Policymakers should understand when and how consumers’ profile and social tie information should be disclosed and accessed through their eWOM behaviors and try to develop trustful regulations.

This study serves as the first attempt to demonstrate that social capital drivers affect consumers’ purchase intentions through their eWOM engagement by its robust conceptual model. No integrated model under SCT has ever been proposed and tested on consumers’ eWOM engagement via SNSs.

This paper utilizes the generic source of “community” to define a disaster community emphasizing disaster areas’ perceived boundaries and the social networks that fall within these boundaries. Three such “disaster communities” are proposed based on family‐kin, micro‐neighborhood, and macro‐neighborhood social networks. Utilizing an Israel national representative sample of (814) urban households residing in 150 municipalities, a set of hypotheses were tested regarding the impact of disaster communities on individual disaster preparedness behaviors. In general, more socially robust communities brought about greater levels of individual preparedness but with significant exceptions by type of preparedness. In addition, the predictive ability of such disaster communities on each preparedness component varied. Ethnic and educational composition of the networks had a negligible impact on disaster preparedness behaviors. Overall, the use of social network based disaster communities provides a sound theoretical and empirical foundation to study disaster behaviors.