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The main purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of trust on the relationship between consumers' social motivation and online purchase intentions in the context of social media marketing in the fashion industry of Sri Lanka.

The sample selection was done using a convenience sampling strategy. An online survey was conducted, and data gathered from consumers who worked for a range of organizations, including universities in the Colombo district (Sri Lanka).

The results illustrated that social motivation has a significant positive effect on trust as well as online purchase intentions. And they further demonstrated that a consumer's level of trust has a significant impact on their online purchase intentions. Trust was also found to partially mediate the relationship between social motivation and online purchase intention.

The study was solely focused on the Sri Lankan fashion industry. Consumer behavior relating to other industries may differ. Therefore, this model can be further developed to encompass other industries in future studies.

The study contributes to practical solutions in the development of consumer behavior (in the context of social media marketing). Stakeholders in the fashion industry may take the suggestions of this research, such as how to incorporate “trust” in social media marketing to attract and retain customers, into consideration in their future decision making.

This study is the first study in the Sri Lankan context to assess the mediating effect of trust on the relationship between consumers' social motivation and online purchase intentions in the context of social media marketing in the fashion industry of Sri Lanka. Overall, the results offer implications that align with existing theories and contribute to practical solutions in the development of consumer behavior (in the context of social media marketing).

This study aims to examine the relationship of information quality of social media, social media reputation, social media political marketing activities, trust and political involvement of millennials.

The empirical analysis was conducted using a sample of 309 millennials. This study used online survey for the data collection. After passing reliability and validity tests, the data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show that information quality of social media has positive and significant direct influence on reputation and trust. Information quality of social media also has a significant indirect influence on trust through social media reputation. However, there is no significant relationship between information quality and political involvement. Social media political marketing activities also have a direct and indirect significant effect on political involvement through trust. Finally, trust also has a positive and significant impact on political involvement.

This research may contribute to the political marketing experts and politicians in increasing the quality and credibility of advertisements on social media, which will affect trust and political involvement of millennial generation. Moreover, politicians and political marketing experts who have an online-based community should optimize their marketing activities in social media to encourage positive behavior and trust from social media users.

This study has shown a more comprehensive model of the relationship between information quality of social media and political involvement. This study also reveals the significant indirect effect of the trust on the relationship between information quality on social media, social media political marketing activities and political involvement.

Este estudio examina la relación de la calidad de la información, su reputación y las actividades de marketing político desarrolladas en las redes sociales, la confianza y la participación política de los millennials.

El análisis empírico incluye una muestra de 309 millennials encuestados online. Tras superar las pruebas de fiabilidad y validez, los datos se analizaron con (PLS-SEM).

Los resultados muestran que la calidad de la información de las redes sociales tiene una influencia directa positiva y significativa en la reputación y la confianza. La calidad de la información de las redes sociales también tiene una influencia indirecta significativa en la confianza a través de la reputación de las redes sociales. Sin embargo, no existe una relación significativa entre la calidad de la información y la participación política. Las actividades de marketing político de las redes sociales también tienen un efecto significativo directo e indirecto en la participación política a través de la confianza. Por último, la confianza también tiene un impacto positivo y significativo en la participación política.

Esta investigación puede contribuir a que los expertos en marketing político y los políticos aumenten la calidad y la credibilidad de los anuncios en los medios sociales, lo que afectará a la confianza y a la implicación política de la generación millennial. Además, los políticos y los expertos en marketing político que tienen una comunidad en línea deberían optimizar sus actividades de marketing en los medios sociales para fomentar un comportamiento positivo y la confianza de los usuarios de los medios sociales.

Este estudio muestra un modelo más completo de la relación entre la calidad de la información de los medios sociales y la implicación política. También revela el significativo efecto indirecto de la confianza en la relación entre la calidad de la información en los medios sociales, las actividades de marketing político en los medios sociales y la implicación política.

本研究旨在检验千禧一代的政治参与和社会媒体的信息质量、社会媒体声誉、社会媒体政治营销活动、信任度之间的关系。

本文的实证研究采用在线调查的方式, 收集了309名千禧一代样本的数据。经过信度和效度检验后, 采用偏最小二乘法结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）对数据进行分析。

结果表明, 社交媒体的信息质量对声誉和信任有着积极且显著的直接影响, 与此同时, 社交媒体的信息质量也通过社交媒体声誉对信任产生显著的间接影响。然而, 信息质量与千禧一代的政治参与之间并没有显著关系。而社会媒体的政治营销活动通过信任对政治参与产生直接和间接的显著影响。最后, 信任对政治参与也有积极而显著的影响。

这项研究有助于政治营销专家和政治家通过提高社交媒体广告的质量和可信度来影响千禧一代的信任和政治参与。此外, 政治家和政治营销专家应当优化社交媒体上在线社群的营销活动, 以鼓励社交媒体用户的积极行为和信任。

这项研究展示了一个比较全面的社交媒体信息质量与政治参与之间关系的模型。本研究还揭示了信任对社交媒体信息质量、社交媒体政治营销活动和政治参与之间关系的显著间接影响。

This paper investigates the usage and trust of Chinese social media in the travel planning process (pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip) of Chinese tourists.

Through a combination of structured online survey (n = 406) and follow-up interviews, the research identifies the diversification of the demand-and-supply patterns of social media users in China, as well as the allocation of functions of social media as tools before, during and after travel.

Social media users are diverse in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour and scope; the levels of trust and influence; and their ultimate travel decisions and actions. Correlations between the level of trust, influence of social media and the intended changes in travel decisions are observed. Destination marketers and tourism industries should observe and adapt to the needs of social media users and potential tourist markets by understanding more about user segmentation between platforms or apps and conducting marketing campaigns on social media platforms to attract a higher number of visitors.

This paper demonstrated the case of social media usage in mainland China, which has been regarded as one of the fastest growing and influential tourist-generating markets and social media expansions in the world. This study further addressed the knowledge gap by correlating social media usage and travel planning process of Chinese tourists. The research findings suggested diversification of the demand-and-supply pattern of social media users in China, as well as the use of social media as tools before, during and after travel. Users were diversified in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour, scope, the levels of trust, influence and the ultimate travel decisions.

Destination marketing organizations should note that some overseas social media platforms that are not accessible in China like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook and Instagram are still valued by some Chinese tourists, especially during-trip period in journeys to Western countries. Some tactics for specific user segments should be carefully observed. When promoting specific tourism products to Chinese tourists, it is necessary to understand the user segmentation between platforms or apps.

Social media is a powerful tool for tourism development and sustainability in creating smart tourists and destinations worldwide. In China, the use of social media has stimulated the development of both information and communication technology and tourism.

In this study, the authors explain citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations in China, a country that blends an authoritarian governance regime with limited tolerance of and responsiveness to online citizen participation.

Original survey data were gathered using a vignette survey among 307 respondents living in the People’s Republic of China. Multivariate analysis of the data was used to test four hypotheses and identify antecedents of Chinese citizens’ social media adoption for “thin” participation purposes.

Citizens’ perceived impact of “thin” participation, citizens’ skills and capabilities and citizens’ trust in institutions are significantly associated with citizens’ social media adoption. Social media anxiety was found not to be associated with Chinese citizens’ social media adoption.

This study demonstrates how vignettes can be used to study adoption of technological and institutional innovations in an authoritarian governance regime and how in this context existing adoption theories can be extended with notions of institutional trust to adequately explain citizens’ adoption of technological and institutional innovations in citizen–government relations.

Although some argue that social media activity could potentially mitigate democratic deficits caused by the state, in the case of China, the intertwinement of state and social media platform renders this argument unsustainable.

This study is one of the few systematic survey studies focusing on Chinese citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations.

This paper aims to investigate how actors in the farmer’s network influence the adoption of smart farming technology (SFT) and to understand how social media affects this adoption process, in particular focusing on the influence of social media on trust in knowledge dissemination within the network.

The methodology used a two-stage process, with semi-structured interviews of farmers, augmented by a netnographic approach appropriate to the social media context.

The analysis illustrates the key role of the farmer network in the dissemination of SFT knowledge, bringing insight into an important B2B context. While social media emerges as a valuable way to connect farmers and promote discussion, it remains underused in knowledge dissemination on SFT. Also, farmers exhibit more trust in the content from peers online rather than from SFT vendors.

Novel insights are gained into the influence of the farming network on the accelerated adoption of SFT, including the potential role of social media in mitigating the homophilous nature of peer-to-peer interactions among farmers through exposure to more diverse actors and information. The use of a social network theory lens has provided new insights into the role of trust in shaping social media influence on the farmer, with variances in farmer trust of information from technology vendors and from peers.

This research investigates consumer intention to follow online community advice. Applying the technology acceptance model (TAM) to the context of online restaurant communities, the study empirically examines the effects of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude and trust on the intention to follow online advice.

The data were collected from 360 members of online restaurant communities on Facebook and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings revealed that trust, perceived usefulness and attitude are key predictors of the intention to follow online restaurant community advice.

Extant research on the influence of online reviews on consumer behavior in the restaurant industry has largely focused on the characteristics of the review, reviewers or readers. Moreover, other studies have investigated consumers' motivations to write online restaurant reviews. This study, however, takes a different approach and examines what drives consumers to follow the advice from online restaurant communities.

In the presence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), due to the social distance restriction, consumers' regular consumption behaviors and patterns have been changing fundamentally. Thereafter, an innovative group buying model has emerged and developed explosively with a specific focus on consumer's location, known as community-based group buying (CGB). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transfer mechanism of user's trust in dyadic contexts of social and commercial role-playing in the CGB program.

This study adopts an empirical research method, with an online and offline questionnaire survey, a total of 382 responses have been obtained. Then, both descriptive analysis and hierarchical regression analysis are conducted to explore the dual roles of group leader and its corresponding effects on consumers' trust (i.e. emotional trust and behavioral trust) and engagement actions (i.e. purchase and share) in the CGB program.

Results indicate that resident's trust and their perception of group leader's friend role can positively enhance their engagement actions in the CGB programs. Meanwhile, for the purpose of profit maximization, the group leader is more willing to play a friend role in transactions no matter whether the role conflict exists.

Research findings provide some managerial insights for CGB platform on the selection and training of group leaders and the incentive mechanism design.

This study intends to explore the connection between Facebook-based social media marketing (FSMM) and Facebook-based online purchase order (FOPO) for 20 popular online fashion retail brands across three South Asian countries: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. FSMM was further divided into four components: Perceived trust (PT), Perceived informativeness (PInf), Perceived interactivity (PInt) and Perceived benefit (PB). 

The authors selected 20 popular Facebook-based online fashion brands involved in clothing and fashion accessories businesses in those three countries. Later, the authors purposively selected 114 region-based Facebook page administrators (admins) responsible for operating those brands' Facebook pages and taking Facebook-based online orders. The authors collected primary data from those admins as respondents through a structured survey instrument. The authors applied SPSS 25 for descriptive analysis and a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) (through AMOS 25) for testing the hypothesized relations.

Based on the valid responses and application of proper statistical measures, it was revealed that three FSMM components: PT, PInf and PB have significant positive relationships with FOPO, while PInt has an insignificant relationship with FOPO. 

South Asia is a growing business hub and the largest consumer market in terms of population. This study was conducted to identify the relationship between FSMM and FOPO in the three most prominent South Asian countries. As the first study was undertaken ever on customer perceptions of FSMM in a multi-country South Asian context, this paper is expected to be helpful for academics in conducting further empirical investigations on Facebook-based marketing as well as practitioners and policymakers in formulating and implementing Facebook-based marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that enable and inhibit WhatsApp users' discontinuance intention (DI) following the change in WhatsApp's privacy policy.

Using the enabler-inhibitor model as a framework, a research model consisting of discontinuation enabler distrust (DT) and the DT's antecedents [(negative electronic word of mouth (NEWOM), negative offline word of mouth (NOWOM) and privacy invasion (PI)], discontinuation inhibitor inertia (INR) and INR's antecedents (affective commitment, switching cost and use habit) and moderator structural assurance was proposed and tested with data from 624 WhatsApp users using partial least square structure equational modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results show that DT created due to NEWOM and a sense of PI significantly impact DI. However, INR has no significant impact on DI. Structural assurance significantly moderates the relationship between DT and DI.

The paper collected data when many WhatsApp users switched to other platforms due to the change in WhatsApp's terms of service. The timing of data collection allowed for collecting the real impact of the sense of PI compared to other studies where the effect is hypothetically induced. Further, the authors acknowledge social media providers' efforts to address privacy criticism and regain users’ trust, an area that has received little attention in prior literature.